


Time Will Tell

by Veritech_Fighter_Girl



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Magic, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2019-06-01 16:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 27,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15147719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veritech_Fighter_Girl/pseuds/Veritech_Fighter_Girl
Summary: Isabel Wilson is just trying to live her life as best as she can, since she was whisked away from her home in the twenty-first century into the south of France in the eighteenth century. Oh and on top of that, she has to take care of a cursed beast and make sure he doesn't go ballistic and murder everyone. When she said her favorite fairy tale was Beauty and the Beast, this wasn't what she had in mind.





	1. Talking with the man in the mirror

     The day that Roselle left was the real start of my new life. We started the day as normal, or what had become normal. We got up at the crack of dawn to forage for herbs and to check up on our clients. There were babies to be delivered, bones to be mended and hearts to be healed. All the time, Roselle took time to remember and care for everyone we met. She had a mind like a steel trap, she remembered someone’s cousin who had come back from the city after an apprenticeship, she knew all of the children’s favorite colors and knew by looking at a house who had died in the night inside. She was an angel. When I first met her, she was a blessing. I had been wandering in the woods for days, getting more and more disheveled. She started speaking French to me, and when she saw that I didn’t understand, switched to English. “Are you lost?” I nodded. “Come with me.” It wasn’t a request, it was a statement. In my heart I knew that this was the woman who could help me understand why one moment I had been sitting in my room in Gilbert, Arizona and the next I was wandering the woods of southern France. For three years, I followed her. I learned from her and tried to emulate her. The day she left, she said to me, “It is time. I will leave you here. It will be easier to adjust for you if you stay. The house and animals are yours. I would suggest taking one of the girls as an apprentice.” And just like that, she left. I returned to the house a little in shock, but felt like I did when I met Roselle, like it was the right thing at the moment.

     A year and a half passed, and I continued doing Roselle’s work. I became the best midwife in the area, took on an apprentice, Sabrina, continued to learn and add to my knowledge, was the maid of honor at my apprentice’s wedding and got to love the French countryside. Everyday brought its own little miracles. Sure, compared the world I came from they would be minor even mundane things, but to us in that time they were miracles. A child with fever would survive through the night, a struggling farm would find good fortune, the winter held off long enough for the crops. Sabrina and her husband, Braden, moved in with me into my extra room and soon they were expecting. The energy in the house changed. Roselle taught me how to read a room, but at a deeper level. “Everything has a magic Isabel. And every magic has a color which can tell you more that you want to know. You must be able to see what color it radiates,” she would tell me. Our house went from a calm, white magic to a more energized green. The energy of life. Any living thing had it, but some more than others, and you always could tell who was expecting because of the slightly green glow around the individual, and the others they were carrying. By my guess, this sign of life didn’t appear until the second trimester, so not as quickly to be useful in telling if a girl was pregnant, but useful enough in those times to tell if the child would be stillborn or not. Sabrina’s child was healthy, for now, but every woman knew the risks of having a child in those times.

     Sabrina and Braden were with his family on the other side of the forest when I felt the change. It wasn’t a sudden change, but subtle, like the smell of winter in the middle of summer. I was working outside in our garden, tending to the herbs when a shiver went down my spine. I thought nothing of it, sometimes the local fairies liked to play tricks, especially on people who knew they existed, like me. However, when I had to go calm down the chickens and the goats, I knew something was up. The typical magical beings didn’t bother me much, and I could usually see their invisible bodies illuminated in yellow, the magic of mischief, but I could see nothing of the sort around that day. It was as if all of the sudden, I could feel something lost. I settled down the chickens and goats and ran inside. It was getting dark when I looked at my wall of mirrors. “Isabel, remember, you cannot see magic correctly if you yourself are not calm. White is pure and when you channel pure magic, you can see the truth.” Even gone, Roselle’s words of wisdom would still guide me. I took a deep breath and calmed my mind. A blank canvas showcases color best. But what kind of color would this portray? I couldn’t even see the color of magic that disturbed me. I shook off that thought and cleared my mind again, looking at each mirror carefully. I was drawn to the castle mirror, and then after I decided the magic was coming from that direction, a face appeared on that mirror. Well, face is generous. It was a talking teapot.  
  “Oh Isabel! You are there! You have to come quickly and talk some sense into the Master!” Mrs. Potts looked rather worried for a talking teapot.  
“I can’t really leave right now. Sabrina is out visiting family and I cannot leave disappear in the middle of summer when people need me. I will come at my regularly scheduled time. If I just need to talk some sense into him, just get him on the mirror.”  
“He is in a right state of mind right now, I don’t know if I can get him to come to the mirror-”  
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” A voice roared on the other end of the mirror, outside of my line of sight. Mrs. Potts shivered. She turned to the disembodied voice.  
“I’m talking to Isabel since you have lost all sense of humanity! This is wrong and you know it!”  
“Alright, Adam get on the mirror and explain what just happened,” I said. A hulking form settled down behind Mrs. Potts and refused to look at me. “I will get the truth out eventually, but it will be far less painful for everyone if you just tell me what is going on.” The form slumped.  
“I’m losing my humanity,” growled the form.  
“Tell me something new Adam.”  
“Well...there was an old man who ended up at the castle.”  
“How, I thought the spell meant that the castle was nearly impossible to find?”  
“Apparently there was a storm and a tree was struck by lightning that led him to my doorstep.”  
“A storm? There wasn’t any storm…around the time of this “storm” did you feel a strange magic?” Adam nodded. “Okay, that’s one mystery kind of solved. So you showed him some hospitality and let him go on his way right? Right Adam? Look at me!” Adam turned his face finally to meet my eyes.

    For most, Adam’s appearance would be shocking, and the first time I saw it it certainly was. Adam stood 10 feet tall and was, by my guess, a combination of a wolf, lion, bear and, well his stubbornness was very goat-like. It would have been fine if his face were just beast, but his eyes were strikingly human. It provided a stark contrast and was honestly one of the most frightening things about his appearance. I could handle a beast at least 10 feet tall, with fangs and horns, but one that obviously had human intelligence and sorrow could be a bit much.  
“No I didn’t. Well, he was shown hospitality and then as he was leaving, he took a rose. All of the sudden, I felt it, the primal urge. The next thing I remember was locking the dungeon door on him.”  
“So just go and let him out! There is a simple solution to this. Prove you have become a better person.” Adam just shook his head.  
"That’s what I was going to do, but he is going to tell someone, and so far, nobody has been actively looking for me. I don’t know if the magic that has clouded our location from almost everyone would hold up with an entire beast hunt from the villagers. And I don’t want the villagers coming to look for me in case I can’t break the spell and I hurt them.”  
“So what are you going to do, just let that poor man rot in a cell?”  
“I was hoping you had a memory spell that you could perform on your next trip out here.”  
“Magic doesn’t fix everything you know, but I might have one. I have to do some research though. Have limited interactions with him, it will be easier that way to erase you from his mind. Put his meals out while he sleeps and stuff like that. I’m going to be coming in a couple of days when Sabrina comes home.” I sighed. “Adam, since I’m calling, what about the flower?” He tensed at that.  
“It is getting worse. Much faster.”  
“That’s what I was afraid of, the spell is exponentially speeding up. You need to be able to find someway to restore your humanity yourself.”  
“The true love-”  
“I don’t think that was all that that spell included. I still think that you creating your own humanity has something to do with it too. Please just try while I am trying to help you out of this situation. That’s all I ask.”  
“Alright, I will try.”  
“Thank you. Now get some sleep and get that man some food and blankets. For some reason your dungeons are the coldest things up in those towers with open windows.”  
“It’s supposed to help the prisoners talk.”  
“That’s a lovely visual I didn’t need Adam. Goodbye.” I waved my hand and cut out the connection.


	2. What would it take for things to be quiet?

    I couldn’t get started on my research for altering Adam’s prisoner's memories, the first thing the next day because I had to do my rounds. There were plenty of women who were expecting, wounds to mend, tonics to administer and death beds to prepare. But first, I had to collect eggs and milk. The chickens didn’t seem a bit bothered by the weird circumstances of the previous night, but the goats were still jittery. Goats on principle were very sensitive to magic, which is why I kept them versus cows. Cows were wonderful, but a bit dull and if some major magical moment happened, the goats would be more useful to me. They would be able to sniff out what happened, and probably would be able to eat whatever was causing the trouble. I had trouble getting them to let me take some milk, and knew that others were probably having similar issues this morning. So on my rounds, I stopped by houses that also had goats to let them know that the goats would be rather stubborn that day. There was a family that wanted me to check up on a child who had come down with a rather nasty fever, an elderly woman who needed help with reaching the top shelf to get her preserved cherries, a farmer whose shoulder needed to be set back into place, and several goats who needed to persuaded that the weird magic of the night before was nothing to worry about. In addition to that, because Sabrina was away, there were people who had come to my cottage looking for help who were waiting for me to come home. 

    I was dressing a particularly nasty gash in a young boy’s leg when I thought about how different my life was. I had been born on the cusp of a new millenium, January 1st, 2000. I grew up in a rapidly changing world, one that faced terrorism, the new age of information, and rapid technological advances. Now I was somehow in 1738 France, dealing with sanitation problems that would give my former high school nurse a heart attack. I couldn’t even treat that heart attack, I thought. My magic alone isn’t strong enough without my potions and herbs.   
“What are you thinking about Ms. Wilson?” the young boy asked.  
“I’m just thinking about what would happen if someone were to collapse right now. How would I treat them, what would afflict them?” The boy’s eyes got big.  
“Do you ever think about anything else? Besides helping people and being a midwife that is.”  
“Of course. I think of fairies flying above us, listening to every word, planning their mischief. I think of what I would do if I could travel. I think of doomed and wonderful romances. What do you think of Nino?” The boy thought for a moment before answering.   
“I think of being a knight. Protecting my family and this village. And getting to have a sword!” I chuckled. Little boys are the same no matter what era they were living in.   
“You would be a very brave knight. Now, don’t take that cloth off your leg until tomorrow and don’t run too fast for a week. Then your leg should be all better.”  
“Thanks Ms. Wilson!” And off he ran, but slowly.

     Nino wasn’t my last patient of the day, but I was able to get through them all before late afternoon. I cleaned up my supplies and checked on my stores for my potions. I was running low on several herbs and plants, so I went foraging. My cottage was on the edge of the village, with a decent garden, but some of the things I needed to collect were best gathered in the forest. The magic from the spell that Adam was under, seeped into the forest. Those herbs were far more potent and good for healing. I grabbed my cloak, and went to collect herbs. I was digging in the roots of a tree, when a horse sped past me. I was so startled that I fell into the hole, definitely not my proudest moment. By the time that I had gotten out of the hole and gotten rid of all of the dirt out of my eye, the horse and its rider were lost in the woods.   
“Well that can’t be good, who ever that was, I should investigate,” I said aloud to nobody in particular. I cupped my hand and poured some water into it. The water was cloudy, so I concentrated and extracted all of the dirt out of the water. Then I blew gently into the water and started muttering a simple searching spell. Quickly, there was purple, the color of inquiry, around my hand and an image appeared in the water. There was the horse, running through the forest, and on its back was a young woman. I focused more on her, and the image became clearer. It was Ms. Belle from the village on the other side of the forest. Why would she be out here at this time of year, in midsummer? Her father was usually the one who left around this time to sell things, I thought. He should have left recently- “Damn it!” I yelled. Maurice did leave last night, and now he is the one sitting in Adam’s dungeon, I thought. And now, Belle is going to find him, and she is going to stumble upon the castle. That may not be true, a small voice said in my head. Well, I rationalized, it’s better to be safe than sorry. I gathered up the herbs I had been collecting and ran back home. I dumped the herbs on the table and started gathering up all of my books of reference and snatched up the remaining dried up herbs I had remaining. I ran to my mirrors and shouted, “ADAM!”

    The mirror connected to the castle stayed a mirror. Nothing happened on the surface. That was not good. I grabbed some herbs and spread them out on the ground. Because of the situation with all the magic around the castle, sometimes my magic got caught up in some magical interference and a spell was needed to increase the power of the mirrors. I stood in the middle of the herbs and started chanting. Pure white magic gathered around me, willing to be bent towards my will. I poured that magic into the mirror. Still nothing. I ran to my scrying bowl and tried to find Belle again. However, the water remained clear, with no answers. Great, I thought, now I can’t even see what is happening at the castle or with Belle. These aren’t coincidences. I ran back to the mirrors and called out, “SABRINA!” 

    The mirror on the bottom left of the wall shimmered and on it was the image of my apprentice. Her long blonde hair was gathered behind her and her hand was cupped around the portable mirror I insisted she take with her incase of early labor pains. Oh to only deal with labor. That is a relatively simple thing, compared to this, I thought.   
“What is wrong Isabel? Who needs help?”   
“Adam, he has done something very very stupid and I have to leave immediately to try and fix it. You will need to come home tomorrow, if you can.” I knew family could be rather stubborn in letting go of a pregnant woman and a prized son.   
“We can leave now-”   
“No you shouldn’t travel through the night. Leave at first light and you should be here by the time anyone needs you, with a little bit of extra time to rest. I’m going to inform Mr. Bruins so that nobody expects you until the evening.” I was getting good at making plans up on the spot.  
“How long will you be there? Should I plan for the normal amount of time that you spend?”  
“I don’t know, I’m taking my travel mirror so I will contact you when I know what is happening and what the plan is.” She deserved to know the whole story, but I didn’t have time to explain.  
“Alright, travel safely.”  
“Thank you and you as well.” I severed the connection and frantically finished packing. Then I went to the inn. I must have looked rather untidy because the innkeeper’s wife, Maria Bruins came up to me.   
“Darling, is everything alright?” She was already steering me towards a table.   
“I can’t stay tonight, sorry. There is an emergency on the other side of the forest. I need to leave tonight. Can you tell everyone that Sabrina will be back by evening tomorrow?”  
“Of course, let me send you off with some bread though. Are you taking your horse?”  
“Yes, I need to get her from out back, so let your husband know nobody stole her.” Maria nodded and grabbed some bread and handed it to me. I could see the orange of anxious magic on the edges of my vision. I took a deep breath. I needed a clear head in order to get through this situation. I felt a hand on my shoulder.   
“Everything will be alright, you are going right now. God be with you Isabel,” Maria said.   
“Thank you, and hopefully I will be home soon. I’m taking my travel mirror. Let me know if Sabrina doesn’t make it.” I started walking towards the stable. Maria followed me.   
“Darling, we survived without you before you lived here, we will survive a day without you now.”  
“You are right, but I worry.”  
“You will get wrinkles that way, and then we will never find you a man!” I laughed at that and opened up my horse’s stall. I jumped onto her back, not even bothering with the saddle.   
“Maria, that is very much the least of my worries right now.”  
“I know. I wish you fortune in whatever dangerous thing is taking you away right now.”  
“Thank you. Hiah!” I spurred my horse into action. She bolted out of the stable and off we went.

    All I could think about was that I could not be too late. I didn’t have time to create a memory potion or spell, but hopefully I could get to the castle in time to save the two humans. Adam’s lapse the day before would not bode well without another presence. I ran my horse hard. I had no way to contact them, and I was going into the situation blind. I could be walking into a situation with two corpses or one with two living individuals that need a memory wipe. The castle wasn’t very deep into the woods, if you knew where to look. I did know where to look, but that curse magic was working hard against me. A ride that should have only taken twenty minutes turned into an hour and a half. In addition to that, the wolves were extra bold. They came up and followed behind me, nipping at my horse’s hooves. I misdirected them with an illusion of myself and the horse going in another direction. That cost me dearly for time and energy. I finally burst into the lawn of the castle, and saw lights in the dungeon. Please, I thought, don’t let me be too late! 


	3. I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough

     I left my horse on the lawn, knowing that the enchanted servants would see to her. I sprinted up the stairs and opened up the front door. I looked up to the tower and saw that a light was moving. What is going on, I thought. I rushed through the door. “ADAM!” I screamed. My scream echoed through the empty castle. I ran to the dungeon, where I had seen the light, but by the time I got there, whoever had been there had already left. Calm down Isabel, I told myself, breathe and concentrate. I poured some water out of my water pouch into my hand and cleared my mind. I focused on what I had seen in the dungeon, a light moving about. In the water, an image appeared. I stared intently. In it, was Ms. Belle, and two smaller moving objects. One was the source of the light, Lumiere, a living candelabra, and the other was moving so stiffly that it had to be Cogsworth, the animated clock. Belle appeared to be talking to the two, and then she picked up Lumiere and left, going towards the East wing. If Belle had been in the dungeon, then where was Maurice? I focused more on Maurice, but nothing appeared in the water. I concentrated more on him. The poor man had always been a widower, and slightly shunned by the people in his village. He had a knack for the mechanical, and also the beautiful, focusing more on fancy work or toys than farming. Typically thinking about those kinds of things would help me see Maurice in the water, but still nothing appeared. I instead focused my search on Adam, Maurice wouldn’t leave his daughter without a fight, and right now the only thing in the castle that could give him a fight was Adam. Although, I reasoned, making Mrs. Potts angry was probably not a wise decision, boiling water would be very painful and lead to third degree burns. The water in my hand clouded. Damn it! Think Isabel! I focused more on Adam. 

     The water cleared and I saw him walking back to the castle from the courtyard. I ran down to meet him. I was halfway down the stairs to the grand hall when I saw him come in the door. “Adam! I’m here! Where is he?” The hulking mass stopped abruptly and looked up at me.  
“Isabel, what are you doing here?” I ran down the stairs to meet him.   
“Well I saw Belle riding like the devil was after her in the forest and put two and two together and realised who you had in your dungeon. Where is Maurice? I need him in order to put together the magic, I think. I actually didn’t have time to create anything before rushing over here in case…” I trailed off not wanting to finish the sentence.   
“In case I lost it again and killed two people, instead of just one.” Adam finished it for me.  
“Well...yeah. It was a reasonable concern. Now where is Maurice?”  
“About that…” Now Adam trailed off and wouldn’t meet my eyes.   
“YOU KILLED HIM?” I shouted.   
“No, woman! I just...um...let him go.” I started and then slowly looked up at his eyes. He held my gaze for a minute before dropping his eyes away and looking down at his feet.   
“You let him go? I’m pretty sure that you weren’t going to let him go because he knew you existed. And he was going to send a search party after you. That’s why I came here as fast as I could. I made my pregnant assistant come home early from a trip with her inlaws! And now his daughter is here guaranteeing that he will come back with a search party from the village!”   
“I know...it’s just...I couldn’t do anything!”  
“You couldn’t do anything? You are 10 feet tall and have horns, claws and sharp fangs! What did they do? Bust your knees?”  
“I couldn’t do anything that wouldn’t reduce me to an animal. I felt it creeping up on me, Isabel. What was I supposed to do? Give in?” I sighed and looked up at him. His eyes, those starkly human blue eyes were pleading with me to understand.  
“Look, I don’t know all of the story obviously. So you can tell it to me while I try to find anything that might help us ease the memory of Ms. Belle and Maurice.” 

    Adam nodded and we moved into the library, which had the best light in the castle, even at this late hour. My books had been retrieved from my horse, and had been placed on one of the tables. I sat down and began to read while Adam paced and told me what had happened earlier that day. The night passed uneventfully after he had captured poor Maurice and he had followed my instructions, leaving blankets and food within reach while the old man slept. He had his servants take turns watching him, acting like the inanimate objects they had the shapes of. Then in the afternoon, Belle had appeared. Lumiere and Cogsworth saw her first, and were shocked. She took Lumiere with her to try and find her father, and Cogsworth went to go get Adam. By the time Adam had gotten to the dungeon, Belle had already found her father. She convinced Adam to let her father out to say goodbye.   
“And then I said, “when this door closes, it will not open again”,” Adam explained. “She agreed to the terms and then while she was hugging her father, she shoved him away, went into the cell, and slammed the door shut. I was shocked. I was now in a tough spot. You keep telling me to be a better person, but if I went back on my promise it would not have made me a better person. So I just took Maurice into the woods and told him to go home. Oh and to never return.” I stared at Adam with disbelief.   
“I’m glad you have been paying attention to my ethics lessons, however, in this situation it would have made sense to go back on your word, or at least knock him out and put him in a different part of the castle. Now you are no longer a secret!” My voice was filled with desperation.   
“If I’m a secret, I have no chance of breaking the curse. The flower has been losing petals at an alarming rate over the past couple of months. And I have to fight the primal urge more often and well, I’m scared. Your theory about becoming a better person isn’t what that witch said would break the curse.” He looked at me with pleading eyes.   
    This man was facing a future where he was going to remain a beast for the rest of his life, and the only beings who ever cared about him would turn into inanimate objects he would probably shatter as he lost his humanity. I sighed.   
“So you think finding true love is more probable than becoming a better person? Even if that were true, we still have a man out there who knows you exist and that you are holding his daughter hostage for something he thinks he did. There will be consequences.” Adam slumped into a heap on the floor. I peered over the table to look at him. “However, you dramatic fool, I think I found something.” He perked up at that and came to the table to look at my books. “This is a spell and potion combination to help people who have experienced major loss. It doesn’t totally eradicate memories, but it makes them...fuzzier.”  
“The curse made everyone forget, there is very little...fuzziness,” Adam pointed out.   
“Yeah, well, as I have said before, whoever put that curse on you obviously had far more magical training than I have and I can’t replicate it or alter it in any way. I can only provide my insight on the structure of the curse.” I stood up and started gathering the required herbs for the potion.   
“That is one thing I’ve never understood, how do you know so much about this curse without knowing who cast it? And why are you so sure that becoming a good person has anything to do with breaking the curse?” Adam helped me gather up the books to make room for the casting.  
“I never told you? I can see magic.” I heard a dull thud. I turned to look at Adam, seeing that he had dropped all of my books and was staring at me with wide eyes.   
“You can see magic?” He asked tensely. I nodded. “Well, what does the curse look like?”   
“Um...well first you have to understand that all magic to me has a color. However, I’ve always had trouble seeing the curse in the same way as other spells. It’s more of a shimmer, like the faint rainbow on water from the oil of a lamp. It’s clear, but I can occasionally make out parts of it. And the part of the “end” branches out into different paths. There is not just one way to break the curse. Which I believe I have said before, Adam.”  
“And you didn’t think to tell me that?! I would have been more inclined to believe you.”  
“To be fair, by the time I made the discovery, Roselle had already left and couldn’t confirm and you didn’t exactly trust me at that time. You tried to bite my head off remember? Then you kind of just went with it and so I never thought to bring it up again.” I sighed and looked down at my left hand. The illusion was flickering, I had spent too much energy today, and I would need to rest before we attempted the memory alteration. “Adam, I have spent too much energy today, I need to sleep in order to properly do this spell.”  
“You can’t get out of this, I could have broken the curse a long time ago if you had just told me! You are so selfish!” Adam’s eyes were burning with anger, frustration and hurt. <  
“Maybe I am, but if you were someone who was naturally trusting, you would have just believed me and let me help you! Your pride is a contributing factor in this problem! This isn’t entirely my fault! And also, you aren’t the only person in my life! I have people who depend on me in my village, and you just expect me to be able to drop everything and come here to help you!”  
“I didn’t ask you to come! You just showed up!”  
“Forgive me for being a caring person and wanting to make sure you didn’t kill someone! I’m going to bed, and you need to cool it. I am one of the only people trying to help you!” I yelled.

    I was walking out of the library when there was a loud roar. I saw some black magic rush past me, the magic of evil, and quickly gathered up some magic. There wasn’t a lot of pure magic in the room, our argument had turned most of it into anxious magic, but I got as much as there was and turned it into defensive magic, dark blue. All of that took maybe half a second, but it was enough, barely. I put it up when something slammed into my magical barrier. I turned around and saw Adam shaking off the impact. His eyes were no longer human, they were full of animal rage. I looked down at my left hand, the illusion was gone. I would soon run out of energy, and probably faint. I looked back up to Adam. He was prowling around my barrier. I had to do something. I took the anxious magic, turned it into pure magic, and wrapped it around him. He roared and struggled against it, pushing the boundaries. Then as suddenly as it happened, the black magic left Adam. It sped out of a window, and I released the magic I was holding. Adam slipped and almost hit the ground, catching himself before he made contact. I wasn’t as lucky, blacking out as I fell to the floor. 


	4. I Have a Dream, a Song to Sing, to Help Me Cope, With Anything

  I dreamed after I passed out. And I remembered what I dreamed, which was weird. I dreamed of the first day I found myself in this small area of France. Roselle took me home and fed me some bread and cheese. I explained where I was from, and she just sat there nodding. Then she explained where I was. I thought it was all some elaborate prank by my brothers. I don’t know where they had taken me, the forest surrounding us was nothing like the forest of the White Mountains, it was too dense. I thought they had taken me in my sleep all the way to Colorado. That would have been more plausible than going from my room in Gilbert, Arizona, in the twenty-first century to France during colonial times. And yet, there I was, sitting in a leaky house with no indoor plumbing and no cell service. I then thought that it was a dream.   
“This is no dream,” Roselle said.   
“How can this not be a dream if you can read my thoughts?” I asked.  
“I didn’t read your thoughts, I read your face. You wore your question plainly. Where are you from?” I felt like she wasn’t just probing me with her words, but also something else.   
“Arizona, in the US.”  
“The US? Is that in the New World?”  
“The New World? Sure, I mean it’s in North America.” I was confused why she didn’t understand or why she didn’t know where the US was. “Really, have you never heard of the United States of America?” Roselle just looked at me with a quizzical look.   
“I have never heard of it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t, or it won’t exist. I am getting the sense that you aren’t from here. In this time. When were you born my dear?”  
“Um...the year 2000.”  
“That would explain it. That is a little less than three centuries away.” My mouth fell down.   
“Three centuries? That can’t be right!” I screamed. But I looked around Roselle’s house, and it did look like it could have been from three centuries ago. There was uneven stucco and wooden support structures. I groaned and put my head in my hands. Roselle grabbed my left hand.   
“This...will cause suspicion. You will be labeled as cursed.”  
“Cursed?” I looked down at my left hand. “It’s a little deformed, a mutation is what I was told, but why would anyone think I was cursed?”  
“These people are...superstitious. But here.” She placed her hands on top of my hand and started to mutter some words, and when she took them away, my left hand was normal. 

    I then woke up from my memory dream. I looked down at my left hand. After that day, I was Roselle’s apprentice and the first thing she taught me was to do the glamor on my left hand. It not only kept away the stares of the villagers, but it was a good indicator of my energy. The spell took very little energy to maintain but if my energy was waning, I could simply look down at my left hand and see the glamor flickering. I would then know not to overextend myself, like I had with Adam. The glamor was gone, and I could feel the magic around me, but I couldn’t control it. I reached into my pocket and took out a rag. Wrapping up my hand, I looked around the room. I was in the South wing, where I normally stayed when visiting the castle. It was very dark outside, so I had no idea how long I had slept. It couldn’t have been long since my energy hadn’t returned. I ventured down to the kitchen. There I was greeted by Mrs. Potts and the others cleaning up after what appeared to be a large dinner.  
“Oh Isabel! I am so glad you are up. What happened to your hand?” Mrs. Potts tottered over to me.   
“It’s nothing that I can’t fix. However, I need some help. How long was I out?”  
“Oh not that long, maybe three hours. The master is in a right state right now. Do you want something to eat dear?”  
“I’ll take some soup. I know about Adam’s mood. It’s partially why I passed out. Please tell me Belle isn’t anywhere near him. I have to regain my strength and then we can deal with all of this.” I sat down in a chair by the stove. A bowl of soup was waiting for me.   
“No, I told Ms. Belle to go straight to bed and she seems like a good gir-” Mrs. Potts was interrupted by a roar. We all turned towards the West wing. I heard a door slam and someone running down the stairs.   
“That doesn’t sound like the master,” the stove piped in. I looked at Mrs. Potts and we both came to the same conclusion. We heard the front door open and close and bolted towards the West Wing. Well I bolted, Mrs. Potts followed as best as she could on a trolley behind me. Today is just too much, I thought, I’m going to need a month to recover from this emotionally. 

     The West Wing was dark when I got to it. I asked some of the candles to light, and one by one they flickered on. Of course they would have dramatic timing, I thought, they are Adam’s servants afterall. I saw the dramatic master himself, at the table at the end of the hall, looking at his rose. The rose symbolized the regression of his humanity. For a while, it was wilting rather slowly, but it had been losing petals at an alarming rate in the past couple of months. I still didn’t have access to my magic, so I grabbed a sword from a suit of armor. The sound didn’t even phase Adam. He just stood there, staring at the flower.  
“Adam? Are you alright?” I asked as I walked towards him, gripping the sword in my hand.   
“I sent her away.”  
“Belle? You sent her home?”  
“I did. I know I made your job harder, but I-I was going to rip her apart.” Adam turned to face me. His eyes were full of fear. “I couldn’t control my rage. That was the safest option.” He looked at me and saw the sword. “I can’t control my rage even around you. I am a monster.”   
“Well...yeah. That’s the point of the curse. But you need to understand that as long as I’m here, I will try and help you break it. And I think that having Ms. Belle around would have helped, but we can do our best without her. I don’t have the energy to go after them tonight, but maybe we won’t have to worry about altering their memories if she is going home to her father. I’ll investigate when I get home. It’s alright. Come on, let’s get some food in you and calm you down.” I dropped my sword and took his arm. We were walking out of the West Wing when we heard the howl of wolves. I froze, remembering the trip to the castle just earlier that day, which seemed like eons away. “Adam, the wolves.”  
“They have been active recently.”  
“No Adam, the wolves tried to attacked me. I had to use magic to get them away.” He looked at me with wide eyes.   
“Belle…”  
“Yeah Belle and I don’t have energy to do any magic.” We both just stared at each other. “Adam, you have to go save her! I can’t do anything! Move!” I shoved him towards the door. He hesitated for a second, then he ran out the door towards the forest. 

     I went down to the kitchen and prepared for the worst. Without my magic, if Belle was injured, I would have to rely on my herbal concoctions. There, Mrs. Potts was waiting and so were most of the other mobile servants. They bombarded me with questions the minute they saw me. I held my hands up to silence them.   
“What happened? Lumiere and Cogsworth said the girl left!” Mrs. Potts hysterically said.   
“She did but she is in danger. The wolves are very active today, and I can’t save her so Adam went out to get her. We have to prepare for the worst case. I am going to need all of the herbs you have and someone needs to fetch my herbs from the library. We are in for a long night.” My voice did not leave room for debate but of course Cogsworth had to have the last word.   
“Or he will kill her and we will never be able to be human again,” he muttered. I glared at him.   
“With an attitude like that, you never will be human again Cogsworth. Now get going. Plumette wait.” The white feather duster paused as she was leaving. “I want you to get everything cleaned up in the West Wing. Get out the nice clothes, get them altered for Adam’s new size, get rid of that awful nest thing he has as a bed, and clean those rags as best as you can.”   
“Of course, do you have a plan for helping him woo her?”   
“I’m just thinking that if he starts looking more human, he might be able to start acting more human,” I replied. The feather duster nodded and went off to get the West Wing cleaned up. I started boiling some water on the stove and waited for my herbs to be brought to me. I went through the stores, finding garlic, honey and basil. Mrs. Potts brought me my herbs, with Lumiere and Cogsworth in tow pulling my books. We got to work, creating herbal concoctions to help with healing and cleaning a wound. I also worked on some things that would help numb pain, and just in case, I sterilized a blade. We took the former contents of Adam’s nest, boiled them and cleaned them. By the time that we got everything almost ready, there was a pounding on the door. 

    I ran to the door to open it up. What I saw shocked me. Belle appeared to be all right, but Adam was on the horse behind her. He was not looking good. Belle looked at me with shock.   
“Isabel? What are you doing here?” Her voice was full of emotion.   
“That is a question that can be answered later, what happened?” I grabbed Adam’s arm to try and get him off the horse, but he roared with pain and flinched away. Belle hastily explained that she had been attacked by the wolves and that Adam had helped her, but had gotten injured.   
“I just got him on top of the horse, with his help of course, but I think that sapped out most of his energy.”  
“Well, you did the right thing, but now we have to get him out of this cold and into a bed. Help me with him.” We managed to get him off of the horse and kind of dragged him into the castle. At that point, I recruited the help of the servants, particularly the trolleys, to help us get him to his bed in the West Wing, where he collapsed. I quickly looked over him, finding the source of the problem, some gashes and a twisted ankle, possibly a broken one.   
“Will he live?” Belle asked.   
“Well, it’s just an injured ankle, so probably,” I answered. I turned my back on her to try and make Adam comfortable, but I could have sworn I heard her breathe a sigh of relief. 


	5. Heal What Has Been Hurt, Bring Back What Once Was Mine

    It was a long and tense night. Adam caught a fever in addition to the twisted ankle he had. We had to cool him with towels and prop his leg up. I even had some of the servants go outside and get some ice to put on his ankle. The curse’s odd effects on the weather around the castle were now being put to good use, instead of just being annoying. Eventually, I let Belle take over as nursemaid and I went to bed. It had been a long and eventful day, but I gave Mrs. Potts strict instructions to wake me up an hour after sunrise. That would give me enough time to regain my energy. I put my head on the pillow and fell asleep almost immediately. I don’t remember any of my dreams from that night. I woke up to the sun shining directly on my face. I groaned. Mrs. Potts most definitely didn’t listen to my instructions. I got out of bed and took a deep breath, and focused my mind. First, I restored the glamor on my left hand. It faded from my Radar-like limb, into an almost identical sister of my right hand. Then, I reached out my mind to investigate what was happening in the castle. The servants were all excited, Adam was actually calm for once, and Belle was worried, probably still tending to Adam. Perhaps, I thought, there is still hope. 

    I got up, grabbed some breakfast from the kitchen and then went to go check up on Adam. Belle stood when I walked in. “Oh please, sit down. I’m just here to make sure he is recovering as planned.” She nodded and then sat back down. Belle took the book she had in her hands and opened it up to read it. I came up to the bed and woke Adam up. He stirred. “Hello sleepyhead. How are you feeling?” He groaned and tried to sit up. I pushed him back down. “I asked how you were feeling, not for you to get up. You can get up later today but I need to make sure you are in the stage of recovery I want you to be in.” I felt his forehead, it was still a little warm. “Belle? I need some more rags and cool water, can you fetch that for me?” She left to get it. She paused at the door, looking back at Adam.   
“Did you really need those? I feel fine.” Adam looked longingly towards the door.   
“Not really, but I needed to talk to you in private. Look, I had Plumette fix up some of your old clothes, wear them.” Adam grunted and turned away from me. “I’m serious. It will help. If I see those rags again, I’m going to burn them. Your nest doesn’t exist anymore, so don’t make another one. I’m going to leave instructions about how to take care of you, but if something goes wrong just contact me on the mirror.” I went to go take a look at his ankle. It was hard to treat Adam due to the curse wanting him to live, but to live as an animal. I wasn’t the greatest veterinarian, and animal anatomy still baffled me a little bit. Fortunately he healed quickly.   
“You are leaving? So soon?” He tried to prop himself up again and so I pushed him back down.  
“Yes, I have to find Maurice and see what I can do. Plus, I have a very pregnant assistant who will need help with delivery soon. And I’m going to ask Belle to look after you, since I think she isn’t staying here right now cause she still thinks she is your prisoner. I think she wants to help you out.” I wrapped up his ankle.  
“Yeah, but the minute I lose my temper is the minute she leaves,” Adam muttered.  
“So don’t lose your temper. There I found the solution. Simple!”  
“Easy for you to say. Before all of this happened I would have been in charge of every aspect of her life. I wouldn’t even have spent time looking at her and now I need her help.”  
“Not even looking? Are you kidding? She is one of the most gorgeous people I have ever met. She is the only person in that dumb little town that makes Gaston look beyond himself.”  
“Gaston? That man is going after her? He is terrible!”  
“Really, from what I’ve heard he sounds a lot like you before this curse hit.”  
“That’s low Isabel. I am nothing like him, there is something not right in his head.”  
“Look, this is your last chance to break the curse, I suggest you take that low blow and remember that. If not for your sake, for the servants. For Chip, he looks up to you and now he might just turn into a broken bit of pottery for eternity. For Cogsworth, whose worry is a bit annoying but well placed. For Lumiere, so that he can go back to chasing women instead of feather dusters. Actually, Lumiere could stop doing that and it would be an improvement.”

    Adam fell silent. He looked off into the distance, like a pining Victorian heroine. “Hey, no matter what happens, I am here for you.”  
“Isabel, do you love me?” I couldn’t mask my shock. I stared at him with my mouth open.  
“What do you mean Adam?” He turned to look at me with those piercing eyes.   
“Do you love me?” He repeated. There was no pleading, it was a simple question.  
“I love you as a friend, but I-I don’t think it’s enough for the curse to break. I think because I come from another time, the curse doesn’t recognize me. I’m sorry, Adam.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back.   
“It doesn’t matter. I am grateful for everything you have done and I’m sorry I tried to hurt you.”  
“It’s fine. It wasn’t your fault.”  
“Stop doing that! You are a valuable human being, and deserve to be apologized to.”  
“Oh...thank you for your apology.” I finished wrapping up his leg and then Belle came back. I placed a towel on Adam’s head and then pulled Belle aside. “You could go home if you wanted. Nothing is holding you here.” I looked into her eyes trying to make her understand, and trying to understand why she would want to stay.   
“I know. I just...he saved my life. I need to make sure that he gets better.”  
“Alright, then I will leave you the instructions to make sure he does. I know Adam can be a bit much, and I am grateful for you being here. It’s been a long time since he had contact with humans other than me. I will stop by your village to explain the situation to Maurice. I will also make sure he is healing from his night in the dungeons.”  
“Thank you.” I turned to leave. She stopped me. “Do you love him?” That question twice in such a short time frame felt like a hit in the gut. I really have a gift, I thought. <  
“He is a friend, I love him like a friend, or like family even. We have been through a lot together.” I paused. “Good luck. I will leave written instructions for you in your room. Thank you so much.” I hugged Belle, waved bye to Adam and then went to go gather up my supplies. 

     I found all of my books and herbs already packed up by the door. The servants were rather efficient as objects, and I could only imagine how efficient they were when they had human forms. I grabbed my things and got my horse out of the stables. While I was saddling up, I poured some water into a nearby trough and did a searching spell for Maurice. The spell didn’t take me out of the forest, which was odd. The water trembled, and then clouded up. I focused harder, and it showed Maurice staying with the widow Agatha. How odd, I thought, why didn’t he go home? I hopped on my horse and made my way to her little encampment outside of Belle’s village. I had offered shelter many times to the widow Agatha, but everytime she refused.  
“I am fine, Isabel. There are others who need more help than I do,” she would say. I didn’t see how there were many who needed more help than her, but I always made sure that I had food for her when I was traveling by. The villagers of her village were narrow-minded and slightly cruel. After she came looking for help after her husband died, she was shunned. No, I reminded myself, it was after she rejected the mayor’s marriage proposal that she was shunned. Ugh, men, I thought. In the twenty-first century they were just pains in the ass, and in this time they were almost insufferable. If Roselle hadn’t been able to vouch for me, I don’t think any man would have ever trusted me to be the next midwife. But Agatha appeared to do just fine, working and living at the edge of the woods near her village. If one wasn’t looking, one would almost miss the entrance to her little camping grounds. It was well hidden in the native vegetation. I gave a signal, the sound of a robin, to signify that I was the one who was coming. I left my horse tethered to a tree and entered her encampment. 

    I saw Agatha tending to a barely conscious Maurice. I came over and sat down beside her.   
“Hello Agatha.” She nodded and kept tending to Maurice. “Do you need help Agatha?” She nodded again. I went over to her fire pit and started to boil some water to create some herbal concoctions. I handed Agatha a salve and she rubbed it on Maurice’s temple. We worked in silence. Agatha was one of the few people I had met who didn’t emit a magical aura that I could read. It wasn’t like the spell over Adam, where I could sense it but not see it, it was like there was no aura to read. She also didn’t speak often, and when she did, it was to always reassure me that she didn’t need my help, or to point me in the direction of someone else who did need my help. I never knew what she was thinking. Maurice stirred.   
“Belle, Belle,” he moaned. I placed a hand on his chest and gently helped him sit up.   
“She is safe Maurice. I have seen her,” I tried to be as reassuring as possible.   
“There was...something that had her.” My reassurance didn’t work.   
“Well, I talked with that something, and she escaped but then it got injured and then she decided she wanted to nurse it back to health.” Maurice just looked confused. “She is safe. I promise. If she becomes unsafe, I will know. Please just trust me.”  
“She is all I have left, please understand if I don’t.” Maurice was a stubborn man.  
“Valid point. Look, as soon as I figure out what is wrong with you, let’s contact her. I have a mirror at the castle and we will be able to talk to her.”   
“You knew that monster existed and didn’t warn any of us!” Maurice was very agitated.   
“Well I didn’t want you all to kill him. He has a soul, I think. And that deserves to be saved.”  
“My daughter is with that monster and you are acting very calm!”  
“I just said you will be able to contact her. But first I need to know how you got in this situation.” Please, I thought, don’t let this be Adam’s fault. I didn’t think I would be able to calm Maurice down if it was Adam’s fault.  
“Well after that monster seperated me from my daughter, I went to the village to get help. The only person who appeared to be willing to help was Gaston. Then when we didn’t find the way to the castle, he thought I was mad. And so he got angry with me and I told him that I would never let him marry Belle and then he hit me on the head and left me tied to a tree to die.”  
“Gaston is such a terrible person,” Agatha said. I looked at her in shock. I had never heard her volunteer words before. “And I doubt anything except a strong curse would change that.” 


	6. This time, don't need another perfect lie

  I stared at Agatha with disbelief. Her words hit a little too close to home. Did she know about Adam, what he was and what had happened to him? Was she a powerful sorceress? Was she the one who cast the curse? That would have taken a powerful spellcaster. That would explain why I can never feel any magical aura around her, if she is powerful, she could be blocking me. I struggled to gather all of those thoughts together when Maurice said,  
“Probably, but where are we going to find a spare curse around? Plus everyone in the town loves Gaston. Nobody would want to see him cursed. No matter how much he deserves it.”  
“Everyone in town is scared of Gaston. And why? Because he saw one little skirmish in the war against Britain and now everyone thinks that they have to love him because he is the only one who can protect our village. Or they fear him,” Agatha added.  
“All this because we don’t have a prince or even a duke to guard our lands,” Maurice continued.  
“Surely there has to be someone in charge. Who do you pay taxes to?” I asked. My village payed taxes to the lord of the next city, but my village wasn’t under Adam’s domain before the curse hit. Perhaps, I thought, this would be the loophole for the curse to weaken.  
“Nobody, we don’t pay taxes,” Maurice replied. Nope, it was still as strong as ever, with these people forgetting about the greedy King they once had. I finished looking over Maurice.  
“Well, the taxes issue aside, you have a slight fever Maurice. And your ankles and wrists are pretty swollen. I don’t think you should try to return home anytime soon by yourself. I do have my horse if you would like a ride home.”  
“Why would I want to go back so soon? Gaston tried to have me killed, and with Belle not there, there is no point to go home. I might as well rest and get better here. I’m safer here, in the middle of the woods with those wolves around than in the middle of the village with people who won’t believe me. And who are willing to kill me for spite instead of hunger. Can I talk to Belle now?”  
“Of course, here.” I got out my travel mirror. “Adam,” I breathed onto the mirror. The mirror rippled and Belle was on the other end. She was following my instructions to keep the mirror on her for emergencies very well.  
“Isabel, do you need to see Adam? He is right here-”  
“No, I wanted to talk to you. Well actually someone else wanted to talk to you.” I handed the mirror to Maurice. “Just talk to it like you would talk to her if she was right here,” I explained.  
“Papa! You are alright!”  
“Belle! I am so relieved to see that you aren’t in that dungeon any longer.” Maurice had tears in his eyes. I noticed Agatha staring intently at the mirror and I nudged her.  
“We will leave you two alone. I need to gather more herbs and Agatha can help me,” I told Maurice. He just nodded and continue to talk to Belle in the mirror. 

    Agatha and I left her encampment to leave Maurice to talk to Belle. We were gathering in silence, but I couldn’t shake the thought that Agatha knew more about Adam and the situation than she let on. Which should have been impossible. The spell erased the memories of everyone who knew about Adam. Roselle introduced me and I wasn’t there for the initial curse casting, so I didn’t have the same memory loss as everyone else. However, Agatha was in the area before I was. Maybe she didn’t get hit by the curse, I thought. She could have come to the village later. Or maybe she was like some of the people who have inklings about what happened. Mr. Potts in Belle’s village was one person I was pretty sure knew he was forgetting something rather important, like his family. Maybe Agatha was like that, I reasoned with myself. “Agatha, how long have you been in this village?” I asked. Agatha shrugged.   
“A long time. It was before Maurice and Belle came,” she replied. Well, I thought, that takes away her not being here when the curse was cast. They were here when the curse was cast according to Roselle.  
“Do you think there is any magic that would change Gaston? Since you have known him so long?” I was cursing myself for being so obvious. Agatha paused and looked at me. The look was a long stare that felt like Agatha was staring into my soul and finding out all of my secrets.  
“There might be. But it would have had to be cast by someone very powerful. And in most cases, being that powerful typically corrupts.”  
“That is very insightful Agatha.” We finished gathering in silence. She knew something, I was sure, but what she knew I wasn’t so sure about. She knew that there was powerful magic at play. But maybe that was all, I tried to reason with myself. But, a little voice said, would it be terrible if she knew? I didn’t know the answer to that. Eventually, we went back to where Maurice was. He had finished talking with Belle and was waiting for us.  
“I have decided that Belle, well I can’t control her anymore,” he said.  
“Probably wise, she does not seem like the type of person to take being bossed around easily,” I replied. Maurice chuckled at that.  
“No she is not. And we decided that eventually, I should move into that castle as well. The creature, Adam, seemed very sorry that he had lashed out and wanted to repay me. But, someone needs to stop Gaston.” 

    That whole statement was full of issues, and I think my face conveyed the concern I had. “Don’t look at me like that!” Maurice said. “It’s not like I told you I was going to go kill the beast, just live with him.”  
“It’s not that…” I started. But how to finish? The curse prevented me from saying that Adam was cursed directly. I could dance around the issue, but if someone guessed, then I could talk about it with them. That’s what happened with me. It was so similar to a fairy-tale I grew up with, so I was able to guess the situation fairly easily with very little help. “Adam is not in a good place right now, he needs some time to heal. To get better.”  
“Right, which is why Belle is staying with him right now and I will come later to help. She feels sorry for him and wants to help. Plus it was all just a misunderstanding what happened with me. We don’t hold grudges,” Maurice responded.  
“I guess. But if I tell you that you have to leave, then you will leave immediately. No arguments or questions. Now about Gaston. He may be a terrible person, but he is a terrible person with influence. And not to mention he has the upper hand physically. You don’t have to face him if you are just going to go live in that castle. You could avoid that confrontation entirely.”  
“No but I want to. There are good people in that village who think Gaston is a good man when he isn’t. He is just looking out for himself and nobody else. They need to know.” The man had a point. If Gaston was willing to leave a man out for the wolves to eat just because he got in the way of Gaston’s plans, then the people in the village deserved to know Gaston’s true character.  
“You are right. But you are in no condition to confront Gaston. You need to heal. I will go and confront him.” I thought my plan was very reasonable, and safer.  
“No that won’t work. No offense, but Gaston doesn’t listen to women. Plus the villagers know you and are grateful, but you don’t live in our village. You won’t be able to convince them. I have to do this.” Maurice had a point about Gaston not listening to me, but I couldn’t let him go.  
“But I can’t let you do this! You aren’t fully healed yet and what if you get hurt more?” I asked.  
“Isabel, you can’t worry too much about me. I’m an old man, if something happens to me, well it probably won’t change any eternal plan too much. Plus, Agatha can come with me.”  
“The villagers don’t trust Agatha. No offense Agatha, but you won’t be safe if they turn against you for singling out Gaston like that.” Agatha just nodded.  
“Well it doesn’t matter because you can’t stop me.” Damn Maurice’s stubbornness, I thought.  
“At least wait until you are healed,” I pleaded with him.  
“And how long would that be?”  
“Probably about six days. I can’t stay to make sure you don’t go, but I will entrust your care with Agatha. Agatha, would you look after him?” She nodded. “Please don’t leave until at least you are better,” I asked of Maurice. He considered my proposal for a moment. b “Alright, I will wait six days, and then I will confront Gaston.”b “Thank goodness.  
“But you won’t be able to talk me out of it. I’ve made up my mind.”  
“Gee, I wonder where Belle gets her stubbornness from?” I said sarcastically.  
“I have no idea what you mean,” Maurice said.  
“My suggestion about confronting Gaston is telling the villagers when he is out hunting or something like that, so they will be on your side, at least initially. Maurice, this is a very dangerous plan. You could be cast out of the village.”  
“Like I said, I have a back up plan.” The man may have had the body of a 50 plus man but had the spirit of a rebellious teenager who had the internet to fuel their ideals.  
“Well, then I will leave Agatha to take care of you. Please don’t do anything too stupid. I don’t have another mirror for you to contact me but…” I dug through my bag and then handed Agatha a jar of herbs. “If you throw these up into the air and shout my name, I will know you want to contact me and I will find you.” She took the herbs and looked at me curiously.  
“Perhaps you could place the curse on Gaston,” she said.  
“I only dabble. I am nowhere near powerful enough to do that. Plus, I don’t think I would do it. To alter someone’s life that much, well, that isn’t my place.” Agatha stared at me very intently.  
“Well whose place is it? To pass judgement like that?” Agatha asked.  
“Certainly someone with more access to all of the facts, God or a really good government official. Both of whom are rather difficult to find.”  
“Well you are certainly right about that!” Maurice laughed. I joined in on the laughter, breaking the tense atmosphere. I made sure Maurice was comfortable and left Agatha with some herbs and a couple of balms to help. Then I got on my horse and made the journey back. 


	7. 'Cause he's stronger than you know a heart of steel starts to grow

     The ride home was a calming one. I knew that Sabrina had things well in hand, she hadn’t tried to contact me on the mirror, so I took my time. It had been a very stressful couple of days. I needed to take some time to ponder on what had happened. First things first, Adam had a real chance to break the curse. Even if Belle didn’t fall in love with him, she would at least bring more humanity to the castle and Adam. But would it be enough, I asked myself. The flower was losing petals at an alarming rate, and it might have just been too late. If that was the case, I needed to be constantly checking in on Belle to make sure she knows to get out of there if Adam goes full beast. Plus that odd case of black magic was concerning. Is she really safe or did I just leave her to her potential death, I thought. You could just check up on her by taking the detour through the forest back to the castle, I reasoned. It would have taken more time to get home, but Sabrina was not expecting me back soon. She just knew I was helping out Adam, which could take anywhere between a day to a week. I decided I would go back to the castle, to check up on Adam and to put a spell around Belle, for protection. I made my way back to the castle, and this time wasn’t bothered by any wolves at all. It seemed that Adam had scared them away. I came up on the castle and saw some figures out in the distance. I squinted, but still couldn’t make them out. Well, I reasoned, the only two figures you would be able to see at that distance would be Adam and Belle. That was a good sign. I went inside and made my way down to the kitchen. It was the unofficial meeting place for all of the servants, so I was more likely to find who I wanted to talk to there.

     Mrs. Potts was sitting on the stove, warming up for lunch. Lumiere was running around, talking about how great it would be if Belle were to fall in love with Adam that night. Cogsworth saw me first.  
“Why are you back so soon?” he asked. All of the other servants turned to look at me.  
“It’s good to see you too Cogsworth. Don’t worry, Adam isn’t dying. I just came back to check on some things. It’s probably for the best that Adam and Belle don’t know I’m here either.”  
“And why would that be for the best love?” Mrs. Potts asked.  
“Because I’m going to place a spell of protection on Belle, and I don’t want her thinking there is anything she needs protecting from here. I guess you could tell Adam. It might help with his state of mind so he doesn’t worry too much about giving in to the...urges. Actually, I’ll just leave a note explaining it to Adam.”  
“It doesn’t matter because she will fall in love with him and break the curse, eventually,” Lumiere piped in. He was so hopeful.  
“It does because he attacked me yesterday. The curse doesn’t want to let go of him. It’s almost like it knew that I was trying to help him and used him to attack me.”  
“That makes it sound like it’s a living creature.”  
“This curse felt like one. Typically magic is like a book. If it isn’t used, it won’t harm someone. However, you can control others through using the book in many different ways. You could hit them, or educate them for example. This was...a very different response from magic than anything I have previously experienced.” I began to set up my books and potions to begin spell casting. “Speaking of the curse, do any of you know of a widow named Agatha?”  
“No but what would that have to do with the curse? But we also didn’t know everyone in the village or anyone who has moved in since,” Plumette said. “My social calendar is very empty.”  
“It’s just something she said. She is taking care of Belle’s father, who ran afoul of Gaston and so he needs some healing before he comes back here.”  
“Oh we know that already, but what did she say? Did she know about the curse? That would be a good sign, showing that the curse’s effects are weakening.” Cogsworth said.  
“I think she knows that there is something going on. Something that required a lot of magical power and knowledge, but I’m not sure that she knows exactly what this situation is. She mentioned that Gaston wouldn’t change unless someone placed a curse on him. That just sounds too similar to what happened to Adam that I just can’t shake it from my mind.”  
“Oh dear, that is a bit odd. However, the curse could have affected different people different ways. Perhaps she is just very magically sensitive,” Mrs. Potts added  
“Or who knows, maybe she is the enchantress. That’s why she knows so much about it,” Lumiere said. That was something I hadn't even considered at all.  
“Well the reason we were talking about a curse was because we were talking about Gaston and how awful he is. Then this widow said it would be better if he was cursed. So if she was the enchantress, why wouldn’t she curse him like she cursed Adam to try and teach him a lesson?” I asked. I didn’t think Agatha was the enchantress, but that would have explained a lot.  
“Well maybe she just cursed Adam because he was a ruler. He wasn’t a good king and that impacted the lives of everyone he ruled over. Gaston isn’t a king or a prince, so his actions won’t hurt too many people. But you are probably right, this is just someone we don’t know. Maybe the curse is weakening though and that’s why she said that,” Mrs. Potts reasoned. I finished up the preparations for the protection spell.  
“It doesn’t matter, it’s a problem we can deal with at a later date honestly. It was just bothering me a little so I thought I would ask. May I borrow some water Mrs. Potts?” I asked. She nodded, or rather almost tipped herself over and came over.

    I stood in the middle of the jars I had spread in a circle around the floor. “If you could just pour some water into each jar Mrs. Potts, it would help a lot.” She tipped some water into each jar and the room filled with the smells of the forest. I closed my eyes and cleared my mind. There was a lot of odd bits of magic hanging around, of many different colors. I focused my energy, gathered up the magic together and started turning the magic white. I didn’t find any lingering black magic, which was a good sign. I then focused all of the magic into a shield shape. Now comes the hard part, I thought. While maintaining that shape, I had to picture Belle and the things she needed protecting from. Protection magic was a dark blue because it was so close to black, but that means it required a lot of focus and concentration. I pictured Belle, helping me with Adam and being concerned with her father. I then thought about what had happened to Adam the previous night, him losing focus. I emphasised in my mind that the black magic had attacked him and that was what made him dangerous. The distinction should have been enough to make sure the spell wouldn’t try to protect Belle from any contact with Adam at all. I also thought about just the curse in general. I had no idea how it would react to Belle unknowingly trying to break it, so I pictured what I could to try and protect her from the curse trying to attack her. I then thought about what Maurice had said about Gaston and Belle, it was not a good situation and since I was already casting the magic, I figured adding Gaston to the list of things to protect her from was a good step. The shield of magic in front of me started turning dark blue from the inside. When it was fully blue, I sprinkled in some of the extra white magic, to ensure it was a little more stable and harder to sense by magically sensitive creatures, like Adam. I then sent it on its way to Belle and it went off into the direction of the library. Of course those two nerds are in the library, I thought. I brought my focus back into the kitchen. The servants were watching me with fascination. “What are you all looking at?” I asked.  
“Is it done?” Cogsworth asked. “I’m assuming it is because all of the weird stuff around you is now gone.” I looked around trying to see what they saw, but it was just a normal kitchen.  
“You saw it?” I was intrigued because most of the time, I was the only person who saw magic.  
“We saw something. I’m just going to assume Ms. Belle is now safe,” Plumette said.  
“That’s a good assumption Plumette. I basically made a shield out of magic and told it what to protect Belle from. Now we can all take a deep breath and hope she can break the spell,” I said. “She is a good girl, I think she can do it. If not, she is at least very smart and will be able to figure it out and then we can at least talk about it,” Lumiere said.  
“But she needs to do it faster. The flower lost three more petals today,” Cogsworth added.

     Three more, I thought, that is troubling. If this curse is really alive, it could be sensing that it might be close to being broken and it doesn’t want to be broken.  
“Well that is not great, but don’t try to rush anything. Love at first sight is fiction. This needs to happen naturally. Maybe with a little help from all of you, but nothing extreme,” I said.  
“Mr. Potts and I had love at first sight,” Mrs. Potts said.  
“And now he doesn’t remember you or your son,” Cogsworth muttered.  
“Only because of the curse! We do have something special.” Mrs. Potts sounded irritated.  
“Well he does remember that he is forgetting something. The only problem is that he doesn’t remember what he is forgetting,” I added.  
“See, that is proof of something!” Mrs. Potts said.  
“Yes, it is. I’m just saying, we might not want to get our hopes up. The curse...I think it is alive and it senses that something is trying to kill or end it. Please be careful,” I pleaded. The servants all nodded and I started gathering my supplies. I left the kitchen and made my way to the back door. I almost ran into Adam, swerving at the last possible moment.  
“Isabel? What are you doing back?” he asked. His eyes were clearer than I had ever seen them.  
“I was just thinking that if Belle was going to be here, well, she might need a protection spell. The servants informed me that the flower is losing petals quicker than it should be, even with the accelerated rate of the last couple of months, so I decided it was probably for the best,” I said.  
“That would explain that magical surge I felt a little while ago. I came to see if it was the curse, but if it was you I won’t worry. I trust you Isabel.”  
“I know Adam.” I was walking through the door when I turned and said, “And Adam, I meant what I said, no matter what happens, I am not going to stop trying to break this curse. You are one of my closest friends here. I don’t want you to suffer.” Adam came up to me and hugged me. He was so tall and strong he lifted me up like I weighed nothing to him.  
“I know, and I am grateful. Thank you for thinking of Belle’s safety.” He put me down. “But don’t you worry. I might just get this whole being a decent person and care for others thing yet.” I gave him one last hug and then finally went home.


	8. Country roads, take me home to the place I belong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a bit late. I've had a pretty crazy time recently.

     I finally saw my house in the late afternoon. I couldn’t yet go home though because I had to take a detour before completely going home to stable my horse at the inn. I went to the back to stable her. I was hoping that since it was an awkward time of day, there would be nobody that I would have run into who would want to talk to me. Unfortunately, I was not that lucky. Mr. Bruins, the innkeeper was in the stables taking care of the mounts that were staying there. He put down his grooming tools and then came over to talk to me.   
“Isabel, did everything go well with your emergency? From what my wife said it sounded like it should have taken you more than a single night and most of the day to finish.” He asked.   
“Yes, well relatively speaking. The situation still needs to be monitored, but it can be done from a distance with some help through the mirrors,” I answered.  
“So it isn’t a dire situation.”  
“Not anymore. Did Sabrina make it back home?”  
“She did. She made it back early this morning. She did the rounds, but the goats needed to be calmed again,” he said. I looked up at him. He looked back at me, and I knew he knew that goats could sense magic. It wasn’t necessarily secret knowledge, but rare, and I was surprised that he knew about it. Well, I thought, as an innkeeper he probably heard a lot of strange things.  
“Again? But I just calmed them, they should have been fine!” This was highly concerning due to the fact that I didn’t feel any magical surges, except for... “When did they start to get antsy?” I asked.   
“Last night. Isabel, is there something we need to be worried about?”  
“Hopefully not. But I will have it handled if it does become a situation we need to be worried about,” I answered.  
“Isabel, the villagers are concerned. They don’t know what is happening. Also there have been reports of the wildlife becoming bolder. There are wolves hunting in the forest. Are we going to be safe?” 

     I took pause before answering. This was a difficult time. Not only was the harvest starting to come in, which always causes worry, there had also been some terrible incidents of people getting mauled and injured. It was almost like there was an air of bad luck. I knew what it was, but the villagers didn’t. And I firmly believed that if a majority of villagers knew about Adam and the threat he could potentially become, they wouldn’t hesitate to rise up and go to kill him. Belle and Maurice appeared to be the exception, or at least I hoped they were.   
“I believe so. However, this situation is very complex and I don’t know all the variables involved. People will just need to be careful,” I finally said. That didn’t ease all of the discomfort off of Mr. Bruins’ face, but it got rid of a couple of worry wrinkles. “It’s honestly going to be fine, you don’t need to worry. I have it under control.” I was trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince him. The curse was so powerful, I didn’t know if I could stop it from harming people.  
“We will trust your judgement Isabel.” He gave me a hug. I hugged him back and put a little bit of calming magic into the touch. Bruins was an influential man and if he was calm, the rest of the villagers wouldn’t be too concerned with odd happenings.   
“Thank you, now, if you will excuse me, I need to get home,” I pulled away and left. Mr. Burins put away my horse and I went back home. My cottage was a humble little place, nothing too grand, with a shed for the goats and chickens and a small little garden. It was large enough for me, Sabrina and Braden. And it would still have room for the bundle of joy they would be welcoming into the world. For now, it would do just fine. However, I would have to do something if Braden and Sabrina wanted to expand their family to a much larger size. Or, I thought, I could pull a Roselle and just disappear. Sabrina was coming along very well as my assistant. Before her pregnancy, I would leave her home alone while I went to go travel. However, being pregnant is taxing. It isn’t easy to create a whole human being inside of you, and so I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Sabrina home alone to deal with the problems of the nearby villagers. Sure she had Braden, but he had a small plot of land to take care of and couldn’t spend all of his time being Sabrina’s assistant plus her husband. So for the moment, I wasn’t able to leave. I would have to wait until the baby came. As I got to the front door, it opened up. Sabrina was standing in the door. She was a little surprised but smiled when she saw me.   
“Oh Isabel I just had a feeling you would be coming home right now. Isn’t that funny?” She reached out and hugged me as best as she could around her belly.   
“It’s a good sign. It means you are starting to sense more about the world around you,” I replied.   
“About that, I-I think the baby might come early,” Sabrina said.   
“Have you told Braden this?” I asked. She shook her head.   
“No, I didn’t want to tell him in case I was wrong.” I could hear the doubt in her voice. If she was going to take over as the local healer, she would need to have faith in her abilities to see or feel more about the potential futures of others who she was trying to help.   
“Well, I don’t think you are wrong. I have been feeling similarly, but it’s intensified since you came home. I think that you will probably deliver within the week,” I said. Sabrina beamed at that. She put her hand on her stomach and closed her eyes, probably sensing the babe.  
“Well then I will tell Braden when he gets back. The goats got restless since you’ve been gone. Other than that it’s been fairly calm.” We walked into the house and I saw that Sabrina was working on restocking the herbs. The table was covered in flowers and leaves.   
“I know, Bruins told me before I came. And I think I have an inkling about why the goats got agitated. The curse is going to end soon, either for better or worse and so it’s getting restless.”  
“What happened Isabel? Why did you have to leave so suddenly?”  
“I’ll tell you as we prepare the herbs. You are going to be out of commission soon, so I’m going to get as much work out of you as I can,” I joked. 

    We went back inside and started to dry out the herbs and put them into jars. While doing this, I recapped everything that had happened in the past day. From the moment that I knew who Adam had in his dungeon, to the revelation that Adam might break the curse before it would break him. Sabrina listened intently and only interrupted with questions.   
“Do you thing Belle can do it?” Sabrina asked at the end. I took a pause before I answered.   
“I don’t know enough about the curse to answer honestly. There are so many other ways that the curse can be broken and I don’t know all of them. If I knew who cast it then maybe I would have a better inkling of what might happen. But because of the nature of the curse-”  
“You don’t have any idea of what is going to happen next with them. It’s blocking your foresight,” Sabrina finished for me. I nodded and we continued working in silence for a moment. I think we were both concerned about what would happen the local magic if the curse did break. Would it make everything go haywire, or would it just disappear? Or would something worse happen? We finished with the herbs from the garden, so we took to the forest, to find the more potent magical herbs. It was slow going, but it was good to get outside and forage to our own thoughts. We got back before Braden did and started to make some dinner. 

    We were about halfway through cooking when there was a knock at the door. I felt out the presence with my magic, it was a group of men. They radiated a spectrum of faint colors, from a bright orange of anxiety to a deep red of anger. I looked over to Sabrina and saw that she could at least sense their presence and knew by my face that they were probably trouble. The men kept knocking, more insistently. I motioned for her to go to the back of the cottage, to be able to quickly go and get Braden from his plot of land. I didn’t want it to come to a physical fight, but sometimes people were less suggestible to my magic than others, and these individuals seemed like it. When she had left the room I went to the door. As I opened it, a fist almost made contact with my face. I didn’t flinch away.   
“Ah, Isabel.” The hand moved away from me and I saw the face behind it, it was Gaston. “Just the person I was trying to find,” he said. I looked at his companions, it was his loyal friend Le Fou and two other individuals.   
“Gaston, to what do I owe the pleasure? I do not think my skills are going to be needed with your friends because they all look in fine health.” I was nervous about what he wanted. It seemed impossible, but could he have somehow known about what I had talked about with Maurice and Agatha? No, I told myself, he isn’t magical in any way, he couldn’t have known.   
“Well it isn’t for us. We are on a quest, a man from our village has gone missing. He might be wandering the woods right now in a muddled state. He ditched me and my companions in the woods. We were just wondering if you had found him perhaps and if you had taken him in.” Gaston smiled at me, trying to use his “charm” to get an answer out of me. I just rolled my eyes.   
“And who would this be?” I asked, pretending that I had no idea what was going on.  
“Maurice, the artist,” Gaston said. His cadence gave away nothing.   
“Maurice, isn’t that Belle’s father?” Gaston nodded. “Well he isn’t here. But I do know if he was wandering the woods, well the wolves have been very bold as of late. It is probably too late. I’m sorry. I can’t go out tonight to look for him, but I can go out tomorr-”  
“No,” Gaston interrupted. “No thank you Isabel. This is a matter for our village. We will find him. We just wanted to know if you had seen him. You obviously haven’t, so we will just be on our way.” Gaston motioned to his companions and turned away. Le Fou looked very pale and scared. So, I thought, Gaston is worried that Maurice lived through the night and will tell what happened to him to other people.   
“Well best of luck,” I called out. They paused and Gaston turned back. “If you do find him, please bring him here. An old man like that out in the woods for several days by himself would be very sick. He will need help.” Gaston came back up to me, took my hand, bowed and kissed it. It took all of my willpower to not take that same hand and slap Gaston’s face with it.   
“Of course Isabel. I know that you will help any soul who needs your help. If we find him alive, we will bring him straight here.” He kissed my hand again and left. I shut the door and saw Sabrina standing in the hallway with Braden by her side. She held a pot and he had a sword.   
“Are you alright?” she asked. Both were in defensive stances.  
“Yeah,” I replied. “But now I have to try and clean this hand of the filth that just touched it.” 


	9. Luck be a lady tonight

    Braden went outside to make sure that Gaston and his friends had left for good and Sabrina finished up dinner. I was scrubbing the heck out of my hand by the well when Braden came back. The skin was almost raw from my furious scrubbing.  
“What was that about Isabel?” he asked. He too came to wash his hands.   
“It’s a long story, but long story short, Gaston is trying to tie up a loose end and I happen to know where the loose end is,” I answered.   
“Did you tell him where the loose end was?” Braden asked.   
“No, he seemed to think that because I haven’t seen him wandering around, I simply haven't seen him. We do need to warn him though,” I added.   
“Who is it?”   
“Maurice from the village on the other side of the forest. Gaston is trying to marry his daughter Belle, who is now at Adam’s castle. Last night, they went looking for her and Gaston got angry at Maurice and then left him to die. Then he was found by Agatha the next morning, and then I found the both of them later. And I guess Gaston tried to go and find him this morning, and couldn’t find any evidence of him dead or alive, so he is trying to find him now to make sure that he is dead so Maurice doesn’t tell everyone that Gaston is kind of a terrible person.”   
“I don’t know why I even asked. This all sounds like it came out of a fairy-tale or something out of the Old Testament,” Braden said.  
“You aren’t wrong there, it seems that our lives have taken a turn for the dramatic. You know they say there is no rest for the wicked,” I laughed. At that moment Sabrina came out.  
“If you two are done joking around, dinner is ready,” she said. We both laughed and went inside. Sabrina had prepared a hearty stew and I ate with a frenzy, knowing that I hadn’t eaten since that morning. Braden and Sabrina also ate a lot and we almost finished off the stew. After dinner, Sabrina was exhausted, so she went to bed. Braden and I finished cleaning up dinner. I saw the extra, and decided that it would be best to give it to Maurice and Agatha. But I wasn’t stupid enough to try and get to them that night. The wolves may have been frightened off by Adam, but they would still be hungry probably. I decided that I would go and visit them the next day, that way I could also warn them about Gaston. I packed up the leftovers and went to bed. 

     It was an uneventful night, which is what I needed after the excitement of the previous day. I got up early and went to give some extra supplies to Maurice and Agatha. On my way out, I ran into some of the early risers and was able to help them out with some of their treatments. A lot of salve for sore muscles, but a few people needed help with some infected wounds. I treated them quickly and then went on my way to Agatha’s camp. I didn’t take my horse, despite the fact that she probably got more rest than I did and she would have made the trip considerably shorter. It’s at times like these, I thought, I miss Dr. Pepper. Or any caffeine other than coffee and black tea. It would take most of the morning to get out there, but it was worth it. Gaston was a dangerous man. When he was bent on something, he wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted. He was also temperamental and got angry very easily. If Gaston found Maurice, I was positive he would either kill him or do something else terrible. You know, I thought, I do think that he probably has some sort of PTSD from his little skirmish in that war. It would explain the mood changes, the anger and the need to put himself first. No, I reminded myself, he was probably full of himself and very selfish before the war. The other things were all symptoms of a mental disorder. Too bad he wouldn’t let me try and help him. Gaston was one of those men that didn’t trust me. He thought I was too smart and he probably considered me a witch. Well, I thought, he isn’t very wrong. I chuckled to myself alone.   
“Who is there?” a voice called out. I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned around to see who was nearby. I didn’t see anyone, so I reached out with my magic. It was an angry red aura.  
“Just my luck,” I muttered. “It’s me Gaston, Isabel. I’m just gathering some herbs,” I called out. 

     Gaston came out from behind a tree. I didn’t really remember the previous night when I was standing on my porch, but Gaston was a tall man. Not quite as tall as Adam was, but no human being in the world was as tall as the cursed prince. He towered almost a foot taller than me and he was also carrying a gun on his shoulder. “Where are your friends Gaston? Are they looking for Maurice or did you find him?” I asked.   
“You really don’t pull your punches,” Gaston said.   
“You came to me yesterday, interrupting my dinner preparations, and told me that an old man potentially needed my help. Of course I wouldn’t pull my punches when it comes to that.”  
“Well we haven’t found him yet. But we are still looking. Le Fou thinks we should give up all hope, that he probably is dead. But I said, no I won’t stop until we have absolute proof.” He sounded so sure of himself, and if I didn’t know what the truth was, I might have believed him.   
“You are so devoted to the safety of everyone in your village Gaston,” I said. He puffed out his chest at that and looked mighty proud of himself. I had to physically stop myself from rolling my eyes.  
“It comes with being a soldier. I feel like I need to keep everyone safe.”  
“Yeah and it has nothing to do with the fact that you are trying to court his daughter.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Gaston turned to look at me and had a wicked gleam in his eyes. Unlike with Adam’s blue eyes where you could see humanity hanging on by a single thread, Gaston’s dark eyes were frightening, it was like looking into the eyes of a wild animal. I made a small gasp as our eyes met.  
“How did you know that Isabel?” He asked with anger in his voice. Well, I thought, now you’ve done it and nobody will be able to find your body when he kills you with the gun he is literally just carrying around.   
“Well doesn’t everyone know you are trying to court Belle? It isn’t exactly a secret. Honestly, the whole town could probably break into song about it.” It was true, but a man like Gaston probably wanted to think he was suave and that his advances were undetectable.  
“Am I really that obvious that you even know about it in the next village?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, it is true that I find Ms. Belle to be an attractive woman. I am concerned about her happiness and finding her father before she comes home is very important to me.”  
“I could help Gaston-”  
“No!” he yelled. His anger rang through the woods and I physically took a step back. “I will find him. I don’t need your help. Good day Isabel.” He stomped off in the direction of his village. 

    Poor Gaston, I thought, now I almost certainly know he has PTSD. I waited for him to get further away from me to make sure he didn’t think I was following him. And just to make sure that he wouldn’t circle back and start to follow me, I covered my tracks with magic. I came to Agatha’s camp late in the morning. Maurice was still sleeping.   
“How is he doing?” I whispered to Agatha.   
“He is slowly regaining his strength. Do I need to wake him?”  
“No, I can examine him with other methods. Here,” I handed her some food and supplies. “I know he will go through your stores faster than you normally would. If you don’t want to accept this, well just think of it for Maurice.” Agatha took the supplies and nodded.   
“Thank you Isabel,” she said. I nodded back and then when to go look over Maurice. Healing magic was silver, close to white magic. It took a lot of concentration and focus, but surprisingly, most of the magic around Maurice was already mostly silver, with tinges of other colors. How odd, I thought, but also how useful. I gathered the magic around me, made it a pure silver and placed it gently on Maurice. He moved a bit, but then settled back down. The magic probed into his body, searching for something wrong. He still had a small fever, but it was not as intense as yesterday. His mind was more troubled than his body. He was worried about Belle, but not because she was in the presence of Adam. That actually calmed him down, but the thought that Gaston would still pursue her was cause of concern. It was quite odd, I thought he would have been more sick. His condition the day before did not indicate the level of recovery I saw. I sent him into a calmer sleep and then turned to Agatha. She looked nervous. I motioned for her to follow me away from Maurice to let him rest. “Well, he is healing much quicker than I thought. Don’t tell him I said that, I don’t want him rushing back to accuse Gaston of being a murderer before five days from now. That should let him think it over so he has a good plan in his head instead of rushing in with emotions.” I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair.   
“But he is getting better?” Agatha asked.   
“Yes, very quickly. The magic around here seems to be helping him. Why would that be?” I wondered out loud. Agatha’s face revealed nothing. She just shrugged. I sighed. “Alright, I trust him in your care, but you need to be careful. Gaston is looking for Maurice. I think since he couldn't find any evidence that he was killed by the wolves, he suspects that Maurice is still alive. I will leave a glamour that will turn away people from finding this place.”  
“Thank you Isabel,” Agatha said. “Belle would be grateful for your help.”  
“I know. Well if she-well-who knows? Maybe she will be in a position of high power and someday it will come back to help me.” I took a moment to perform the glamour and then left to go back home. Luckily my luck had changed and I didn’t run into Gaston. Hopefully, I thought, he gave up on the search. I considered briefly making something look like Maurice’s corpse for Gaston to find, but I decided against it. Maurice wanted to eventually face Gaston, and it would take a lot of explaining on his part if he had to give a reason for why he was still alive when there was a corpse buried for him. No, I reasonned, it would just be better for everyone if Gaston could just not find Maurice until Maurice was ready to be found. Let’s just hope, I thought, that Gaston will let off some steam before that confrontation. 


	10. Silence like a cancer grows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, school really slammed me, but I've got a bit of a break now, so hopefully I can get some stuff updated and added for you.

    I didn’t pass by the castle again on the way home. I figured that it was either going to end well, or it wasn’t, but the spell I had on Belle would be strong enough to keep her safe. Plus, I was way behind on my work at home and needed some time to catch up. I continued to gather herbs since we seemed to be going through them quite quickly. By the time I reached home, I was cursing myself for not taking my horse out with me. I was tired, hungry and I arrived home at the same time as I had the previous day. Sabrina was out, probably tending to someone in the village, so I went to the mirrors. The mirrors worked like the cell phones of my previous life. I could contact an individual who had a matching mirror and if I missed the person, I could leave a message. The previous day, Sabrina had gone through all of the messages from when I was gone, so I was hopeful that there would be very few messages. I was very lucky, there was only one. It was from the castle, but nothing disastrous. It was just Mrs. Potts updating me on Adam’s progress. I listened to the message while I cleaned up the house.   
“Oh Isabel, everything is just going great! Adam and Belle seem to have hit it off. They both happen to love reading, so Belle has been reading poetry and Shakespeare to him. He is up and walking around now; he is feeling much better. Plus we were able to persuade him to wear actual clothes and not that rag of a cloak he insisted on wearing for a long time. Everyone is so happy and excited. We are cleaning the castle and making everything just sparkle and shine! I don’t remember a time since the curse was cast when we had this much hope! However, the rose is still losing petals. If you could come out in the next couple of days to give us a new estimate for...well hopefully for nothing. I just hope all of this is enough. I will continue to keep you updated and will get into contact immediately if something goes wrong.” And that’s where the hopeful teapot’s voice ended. 

    I sighed and put away the last of the dishes that I had been washing. Well, I thought, things are out of my hands. If the rose was losing petals, there was nothing I could do to stop it. It’s a race against time now, and Adam will have to do his best in order to try and break the curse. Adam had lost hope for a while now, but his servants were always adamant that fate would help them out. And in their little naive thoughts, they were right. Fate it seemed, had brought them Belle and Maurice, two humans from the outside world who appeared to be quite content with living and helping them, after the initial issues had been sorted out. Either way, we would know the results soon enough. With the rate of petal loss, it would probably be within the month or even less than that that the curse would take over. There was still so much to do within that time, all while Sabrina would be fairly out of commission with a new child. I was brought out of my thoughts with a knock on the door. I went to open it and there stood Le Fou, Gaston’s friend.   
“Isabel, how do you do?” he asked nervously. His hands were wringing his hat.   
“I’m good Le Fou, what brings you here after yesterday?” I asked him. He looked around nervously and then took a while to respond.   
“I-I can’t talk about it out here, can I come in?” I nodded and let him inside the house. Le Fou was a friend of Gaston, but he was not cut from the same cloth as Gaston was. I suspected he hung around Gaston for the protection and security that Gaston offered. Plus I had a sneaking suspicion that Le Fou might have wanted something more from his friendship with Gaston, but I wasn’t going to assume anything. Le Fou went straight for the table and sat down. There appeared to be a great weight on him, and he was very tense. I sat across from him in silence, I had found that it was the best tactic for when people wanted to talk.   
“It’s about Maurice,” he finally said. I nodded, encouraging him to continue. “Well, um, he didn’t exactly end up wandering in the forest all by himself. He had,” Le Fou took a deep breath. “He had come into the village earlier that evening. He was agitated saying that Belle had been taken captive by a beast. In the middle of the woods if you could believe it.” Oh I can believe it, I thought. “Well, Gaston and I, we-we offered to help him “find” Belle. But um well as the night progressed and we were going around in circles Gaston got angrier and angrier. Eventually, Maurice passed out and-and we just left him there!” At this proclamation, Le Fou burst into tears. I got up and got him a cup full of some herbal water, which would help him calm down.   
“Drink,” I said as I handed it to him. 

    Le Fou gulped down the water quickly. Then he looked at me nervously. What should I do, I asked myself. What if he was sent by Gaston to try and figure out what I know about the situation or if I had meddled in the affairs of his village. This could be a trap. But, I countered myself, what would he do if it was a trap? It’s not like you are going to tell this man the location of Maurice, you could just say he is alright. But that could lead Gaston into trying to find Maurice with more energy and then it would be worse when they finally did meet. Well, I reasoned, you could just use your magic to see if he is being sincere. And so I did. I reached out with a form of healing magic, and probed around Le Fou. He was genuinely concerned for Maurice.    
“Gaston doesn’t know you are here does he?” I asked him. Le Fou shook his head. “Why are you so concerned about him? He is an old man who has no dealings with you. Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone if he was dead in the woods?”   
“It’s never easier if someone is dead in the woods. Well, it might be for now, but who could live like that? I can’t deal with the guilt right now, what would happen if this kept going on for years? I would die myself of the guilt,” he said. He was getting anxious just thinking about that, so I got him some more water. He drank it a little slower this time.   
“I know he is alive,” I said. Le Fou looked up to me with curiosity. “I am not heartless. Even if Gaston told me to not look into it, I had to at least make sure he was not dead.”   
“Do you know where he is then?”   
“His location is protected. It is hidden from sight,” I responded. I did not like to lie, and technically that wasn’t a lie. However, I reminded myself, a lie of omission is still a lie. It did however, calm down Le Fou.   
“Thank you Isabel. I won’t ask you to look farther and if Gaston comes by, I just came by for something for my nerves.”   
“Why would Gaston come back? He seems to want to keep me far away from all of this,” I asked. Le Fou took a moment before answering.   
“He probably thinks you can’t keep your nose out of a situation in which someone needs help. Well you kind of proved him right, but I won’t say anything. I just feel so terrible and I am so grateful he is alive.” Le Fou took my hands and kissed them. “Farewell you healing sprite.” And with that he left my house and went on his way. 

     I trailed him with some magic. I needed to make sure that he didn’t tell Gaston everything and that if he did, I would be prepared for the aftermath. While he had no influence in my village, in his own village he was a war hero. The only one who could provide protection from the big, bad world, he claimed. Plus he owned the inn, which didn’t make him unpopular. The people of this area lived very hard lives, so the comfort of alcohol and a sense of community was very appealing to a lot of people. The reality was Gaston was a bully, using his influence and towering presence to force people to his will. Poor Le Fou was simply always at the end of those confrontations, either dealing with Gaston not getting his way or dealing with the consequences of Gaston getting exactly what he wants. I broke myself out of my thoughts and then continued to clean up my home. That was something Roselle instilled in me, and what I tried to instill in the people of this time. Sanitation was a huge problem during this time, and it comforted individuals who came into my home to be healed in a clean environment. I also got started on dinner. Braden came in from the fields and collapsed on the chair by the fire.    
“The harvest is not coming in the way it needs to,” he sighed. “It will be a rough winter.”   
“That is good to know. I will read the land again to see if there is something we can do,” I said.   
“Perhaps. It just feels like the land is...scared. Something is going to happen Isabel, and it’s just waiting to see what happens.”   
“We know something is going to happen Braden, and it is quite possible that the magic from the castle is pouring into the land. I will do a searching tonight with Sabrina. I was already planning on setting up a barrier around the castle. A curse this large, it will have a massive influence upon all of us, and not just around the castle.”   
“You should tell everyone that something has been done to help with whatever is going on. I think they all know something is happening. It’s all around us.”   
“Will do. Now why don’t you continue the knitting while I finish up dinner? I’m making shawls for the widows to make sure they will be warm enough this summer.” Braden grumbled and picked up the knitting that was sitting in the corner of the room.   
“Why do old people get cold now? Shouldn’t we be making these closer to the fall?”   
“Well first, old people tend to just be chilled a lot, and helping them maintain comfort is one way to honor their long lives. And second, you will be a new father soon, so we really don’t have a lot of time. As the youngest of your family, you don’t understand how much time babies take.”   
“Oh come on, I took care of my nieces and nephews.”   
“Taking care of nieces and nephews is different. You can hand those little ones back to their parents when they get fussy. You will be the parent in this case. The baby will be given back to you.” My comment was met with a face of pure terror.   
“What have we done?” Braden asked.   
“You have decided to continue the human race. Millions before you have done it, and billions after you will do it. You will be fine. Plus, you have a built in babysitter and nurse. Although, I have changed enough napkins in my life. I will leave that honor to you.” Braden made quite the face at that.   
“Thanks for that honor, I’ll include it in my prayers. Dear God, thank you for the trial of dirty napkins.” 


	11. Where have all the young men gone, gone for soldiers every one

    Sabrina came home shortly after that, breathing heavily. Braden jumped up to his feet and helped his wife to a chair.   
“I’m fine, I’m just carrying around another human being with me, at all times and in all places!” Sabrina protested. But she took her husband’s outstretched hand anyway.   
“I know that, but I am just trying to do the right thing and protect my wife from any troublesome spirits in the room,” Braden replied. He started waving off tiny, fake assailants to prove his point.  
“I would see the spirits before you would,” she scoffed. But she still waived off invisible spirits.   
“Just let me do this, I just realized today that the rest of my life is going to be changing dirty napkins,” Braden shuddered. His wife playfully slapped his arm.  
“You just figured that out? What did you think a baby would involve? Magically disappearing poop?” Sabrina looked to me for support. I merely shrugged. Men never saw the reality of a child being born until right before the child comes, or even when the child is put into their arms.  
“You know what that is a great idea Isabel could you-”  
“Nope.” I cut off Braden before he could finish that sentence. “No way am I going to try to make a baby not poop. Dinner will be ready in about half an hour,” I added.  
“That would let you off the hook way too easily,” Sabrina interjected.  
“But dear wife, we could revolutionize parenting! Imagine life without dirty napkins!”  
“Yeah and while we are at it, why don’t we just become lords and ladies and rule over the land? Free cake for all!” Sabrina said. We all chuckled at that and continued on with our tasks. Sabrina sat down and started sorting the herbs I had gathered to be dried. Braden resumed his knitting and we had a comfortable silence settle between us. 

     We had a couple of people drop by before night truly set in, mostly older individuals with joint issues. One of them commented on the strangeness of the timing.   
“Honestly Isabel, it’s like my joints know there is a storm coming, but typically they tell me when I can see the clouds in the distance,” Mrs. Trier said. “But I saw no clouds in the sky.”  
“Well perhaps tomorrow there will be clouds,” I responded.   
“Perhaps, but something is off Isabel. Everyone is talking about it. And I’m not blind, I have seen lots of people coming here. Something is going to happen,” Mrs. Trier said. She was staring intently at me to try and figure out if I knew something more than what I was willing to tell.  
“I know. I am consulting others to try and find out what they know,” I said. There was no reason to tell her that the others were the land itself.   
“It feels like we are on the verge of battle,” her husband pipped in. I turned to look at him as I massaged his wife’s wrist. “It feels like it did when those damned English tried to fight us. There was an air of...anticipation. That’s what it feels like, not like there is a storm coming.”  
“I didn’t know you were in the military Mr. Trier,” Braden said.   
“I was briefly. Mostly just for that battle close to the town on the other side of the forest.”  
“The one that Gaston supposedly did his heroic act in?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. That was becoming more and more of a problem.   
“Supposedly? He did do something heroic,” he responded.  
“I’m sorry. I’ve just never actually heard what he did. I guess I just assumed he made it up,” I said. That was a mistake. Mr. Trier’s face turned red and he started speaking louder.  
“Why would he do that?” he demanded.  
“To feed his ego,” I muttered. Braden coughed and nudged me. He shook his head and pleaded with me to say something to ease the tension. I cleared my throat and spoke clearly, “I don’t know, I guess that’s just what I thought. Please tell me, I would love to hear that story.” That calmed down the old man a little bit. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. 

    “It all started on a crisp fall day. We had all been told that there would be a battle soon, but we didn’t know when exactly. We were all simply trying to prepare for the incoming winter. Knitting, sewing and trying to patch up every scrap of clothing we had available to us. Us locals were lucky, our families were able to come and visit us. I remember looking at Gaston, he had a lot to prove. His parents were successful with their inn, and he was one of the few from his village who were with our unit so close to home. He was scrawny then, still a boy really. We were all just waiting. Then the call came. The English were coming. We got ready, and then we got massacred. We weren’t prepared in any sense of the word. By the end of the night, we had lost almost two thirds of our soldiers. The next day, we held our ground. We couldn’t let them advance and make it to the village. We were almost completely wiped out. That night, Gaston snuck out of camp to the other side. When we woke up, the other army had fled or died. And there was this scrawny boy standing where the army used to be, covered in blood. We asked him what happened and he didn’t answer. He just stared west and said, “They won’t be returning.” 

    And we left it at that. We returned home victorious and Gaston was a hero. He saved all of us. But something changed. His eyes were dead. I would never want to know what happened that night. But I do know this, he was a changed man. Whatever happened that night turned him on an edge. And I don’t blame him. That much death and carnage, it was too much for even the most hardened of us. The smell has never escaped my nose, and I doubt that it will ever leave Gaston’s. That man is a hero. We must give him the respect he deserves, because he saw and went through Hell and he came back to save us. He saved us all.” The room fell silent after Mr. Trier stopped talking. I finished up helping his wife and they went on their way. A couple more people came in for help, and after that Braden and Sabrina went to bed. 

     I stayed up because there was a lot to think about. The story about Gaston was very disturbing. Something happened that night that he sneaked out that probably accounted for why he almost always had red magic surrounding him. But what could it have been? I racked my brain for anything that Roselle had told me that would account for what happened Gaston. Gaston himself didn’t try to hide his aura, and I felt no magic coming from him, so it was very doubtful he was magical in any capacity. It could have been possible that he had a little bit of magic and just burned himself out with that one action. Or the more probable was a simple possession. But possessions happened rarely and almost always for a distinct reason, and I had felt nothing in the land that would have enough lasting emotion to turn into a potential possession. A possession only happens because of a major event, for example a massacre. There is energy from those who have died, and over time it can gain power and eventually, the power will burst and take over the body of someone alive to carry out vengeance. Plus, Gaston didn’t strike me as the self-sacrificing type. What had he really been doing that night to lead him towards the English army? And what impact had that upon what happened? This was no ordinary situation, and I had been a fool to think that Gaston was just an ordinary, abusive man who didn’t know how to properly deal with his emotions. But was it really my problem? Gaston obviously didn’t want my help even with finding Maurice, so why would he want any help with...this? No, I reasoned, I needed to stay out of this. But, a smaller voice in my head whispered, what if it happens again? What are you going to do then when the blood of innocents is on your hands? 

     I sighed and decided to head outside. I was always able to think more clearly when I was under the stars. I sat down in my yard and closed my eyes. There was always an abundance of magic during the night, because the humans weren’t typically out to muddle things up. I could feel the magic bouncing off of me and spinning through the air. It was all moving towards the castle. What a surprise, I thought. Then I had an idea. There was really only one person in the area who knew how to deal with issues that could potentially affect lives, and now he was actually thinking like a good leader. I reached into my pocket and pulled out another portable mirror, and breathed,  
“Adam.” The mirror rippled and then I saw Adam’s face.   
“What is it Isabel? Was I supposed to check in?”  
“No, I-I just need your advice,” I said. He waited for my question. “Say that you know there is a potential threat. And you don’t know anything about this threat except that it could potentially hurt a lot of people. But you don’t want to get involved and take out the threat because you don’t even know truly what the threat is, how it works or how strong it is. What do you do?”  
“Before, I would have done nothing unless the threat was going to harm me directly. Now though,” Adam paused. I patiently waited for him to answer. He sighed and continued. “Now I would take it out if it posed any threat to anyone I cared about. Without question.” We both sat in silence for a minute. “Are you okay, Isabel?”  
“Yeah, I just need to think it over. Nothing is going to happen, at least not yet.”  
“But something might.”  
“Yes, something might.” Again we fell silent.   
“Isabel, I want you to know that I trust you. No matter what decision you make, it will be the right one.”  
“Thanks Adam. I think I’m going to head to bed now, it’s been stressful. But before I go, how is it going with Belle?”  
“It’s...it’s going well. She is intelligent, funny and always has an opinion. Even if we don’t break the curse, I’m glad she will be one of the last humans I got to know. Before...you know…”  
“I know. But don’t give up hope yet. There is still time.” Adam didn’t respond after that for a while.  
“Sure, there is still time. Good night Isabel.”  
“Good night Adam.”


	12. Chapter 12: And I would keep you from all harm

    The next day dawned bright. I rose early. “No rest for the wicked,” I muttered to myself as I slumped out of my bed. Sabrina was cooking in the kitchen as I stumbled into the room.   
“Good morning Isabel!” she cheerfully called. She hummed and waddled her way around the stove. I could feel the happiness she felt radiating off of her and it almost blinded me.   
“Morning Sabrina. How are you so happy this early in the morning and this close to your child being born?” I blinked away the sleep from my eyes.   
“Oh I don’t know, but I just feel so, so happy!” she beamed.   
“That makes one of us,” I groaned.   
“You aren’t happy? That’s probably the pregnancy brain talking,” Sabrina said.   
“Well I guess I’m just tired. A lot has happened recently.” I winced at how hectic the past couple of days had been. I honestly hadn’t had a moment to breathe since Maurice had been taken.   
“Yeah, with the stuff happening with Adam and Gaston, I could understand how you might not have had a peaceful rest,” Sabrina said. I yawned and then nodded in agreement.   
“Well standing here won’t help, I’m heading out to make the rounds. You just stay here, look over the messages and put the herbs into their concoctions.”  
“Wait! Before you go, at least eat some porridge!” Sabrina put some of the porridge into a bowl and put it on the table. I sat down and started eating. Braden came in and ran straight to the pot. “Hey!” Sabrina hit his hand with her spoon. “I will dish it up for you. Patience is a virtue.”   
“Oh come on! I slave all day and this is what I get?” Braden said.   
“It hasn’t been all day. The sun literally came up only an hour ago,” I said.  
“And I have been working hard since that hour started,” he replied. Sabrina and I shared a look before doubling over with laughter. Braden joined us and we ate breakfast together for the first time in a long time. It was good to forget about the troubles of the world for a moment and just relax. Eventually, we cleaned up and then I left to do my rounds. For the most part, the village was thriving. Summer was almost always a good time for our area. There was plenty of light to continue working the fields until late in the night, and so a lot of people were kept busy. In winter months, people started to get restless and reckless. They did stupid things that eventually caused injury, like trying to sled down the hills surrounding our village with a sense of abandon. My part during the summer mostly dealt with the aches and pains that came along with hard labor in the fields. And it was the start of the pregnancy season, with Sabrina being one of the first who would give birth. There were several other women who were also expecting, but they would give birth later in the season. 

    However, nothing could compare to what happens after the harvest is in. That’s when people really care about their injuries. At that moment, I just had to deal with keeping the pain at bay. But when winter set in, people came to me with their actual problems and wanted more permanent solutions. I tried my hardest to make people sit down for more than an hour to treat them during the summer, but few of the villagers listened to me. So I went around applying balms and doing basic acupuncture to help relieve stress. I went home at lunch to help Sabrina with refilling and sorting through the house. I also started to take inventory of the winter herbs we had so that I could start making a list of what needed to be rationed and what needed to be found as soon as possible. I probably should try to get them now, I thought, before-. I cut off the thought before it finished in my head. If I gave up hope in Adam finding some way to break the curse, then who would be in his corner? Belle certainly wouldn’t, she simply didn’t know enough about the curse to really care, and the servants, well they were in the same predicament as Adam. They were also hopeless optimists, and so their advice often fell on deaf ears because Adam didn’t believe them anymore. No, I told myself, I can put off gathering the herbs until after the curse is broken, because it will be broken. But I did make a mental note that I wouldn’t let Sabrina go out to gather the herbs until I was certain that her magic was strong enough to protect her from whatever she would encounter in those woods.

     It was a slow day, but was much appreciated since I couldn’t get a break since Sabrina came home. Belle contacted me on the mirror to inform me that Adam was recovering nicely, and Adam reported that he was back to normal.   
“Really? So quickly?” I asked. If I had been gone from the castle as long as it felt like I had been gone, that would be one thing. But all of this had happened not long enough in the “Truly. Do you doubt it?” He tried to get the mirror to show off his ankle, but he almost fell over. Belle caught him and straightened him. They were fairly familiar with each other despite the short amount of time they had spent together. Maybe he could break it with her, I thought.   
“A little. Even with your fast healing and with my magical herbs, it should have taken at least a week,” I replied. This was concerning to me, as the spell appeared to be getting stronger.   
“I mean it does throb a little, but it’s nothing compared to the hunting injury I got back when I was human. Honestly, I feel fine.”  
“Hmmmm, interesting. Belle, could you give us a moment please?” I asked. She nodded and then left the room. “Well, you know the magic is trying to keep you alive. It’s doing everything to make sure that the curse happens. I think even if someone tried to kill you, they wouldn’t be able to until the curse had taken full affect. Honestly, if this spell wasn’t trying to take away your humanity, I would be in awe. This spell, it’s so complex and powerful. It must have been cast by someone who had an immense power and it’s just so hard to detect, they must have been a genius.”  
“We know who cast the spell, it was the enchantress. It was hard to miss her casting the spell when she was glaring at me and pointing a rose at me surrounded by glittering magic.”  
“I guess, but it seems so odd. She just bolted after the spell. Normally, I would say she would have stayed to gloat it over you or to keep monitoring the spell. Plus, someone who could cast this kind of magic, well they would be well known.”  
“I really don’t think that she was planning on staying around after she cursed me to have the power to tear her apart limb from limb. Plus, her style of cursing terrible people and then running wouldn’t really work well if people knew who she was and what her calling card was,” Adam said.   
“If she was this powerful, there would have been no way in hell that you would have gotten close enough to her to even scratch her with your claws. Plus, the spell is so complex that I think the caster would have no problem doing different things every time she wanted to carry out her own form of justice on jerks.” There was a pause. “Adam, have you had any more…”  
“Have I gone ballistic and tried to kill or harm everything in my path? No not since that night that I attacked you.”  
“Well that’s progress right?”  
“Well when the rose has less than five petals less it really doesn’t matter. You are going to have to come into this forest and kill me in a little bit, and hopefully I don’t kill Belle in the process,” he said bitterly. I felt bad for him, so I gathered up a bit of magic and extended my consciousness to the castle, to wrap him up in my projected arms. He melted into the magic.   
“Adam, you can’t give up. We still have time. And-and if it happens, I will find some way to make sure that you live out the rest of your days peacefully and you won’t have any blood on your hands. I promise.”  
“Thank you Isabel.”  
“Now go and obsess over the books in your library with a semi-captive audience,” I said. Adam laughed at that and we broke connection with our mirrors. 

     There were quite a few winter herbs that needed rationing, but I also knew that they would be able to be found, for the moment, by Adam’s castle. That was the nice part about it being almost always winter there, the herbs that I needed were almost always growing around the castle. I sent a quick message to the castle for Mrs. Potts to have someone gather them up and I would pick the herbs up the next time I was there. I stayed the rest of that afternoon home, I was truly drained. There had been a lot that had happened, and I felt that there was still a lot that was going to happen as well. I decided to take a nap, but was awoken by a sharp rap on the door shortly after laying my head down. I got up to answer it, because if Sabrina felt that she was going to deliver early, then I wanted to make her last bit of pregnancy as easy as possible to deal with. That means that I have to deal with all emergencies for now, and probably for the next two to three years. Children just take so long to grow up, I thought as I went to answer the door. I stopped about a foot away from the door, with my hand almost at the doorknob. The strongest, reddest magic I had ever encountered was radiating from the door. It intensified when it sensed my magic and surged towards me, transitioning from just a red magic into a pitch black magic. I just reacted. I didn’t think to investigate further, instead I was focused on saving Sabrina. I instantly gathered up the magic around me and turned it into a barrier, pushing away the magic that threatened my home away. I sent it flying back about 50 feet. I then transported Braden into the house. He looked dazed, but when he saw my face, any questions he had died in his throat. I went into my room and took out the one physical gift Roselle had given me besides the house. It was a pair of beautiful and graceful long daggers, specifically made for me. They were imbued with magic that swirled around them and answered to my touch. The day that Roselle had given them to me, she had said,   
“You will know when to use these. They are not to be used lightly.” And just like that she handed them to me. I took them uneasily at the time, but when I felt that magic come towards me and threaten my family, I didn’t hesitate to grab them. I went out into the main room and saw that Sabrina had awoken and was being held by Braden. They both looked at me nervously and saw the blades in my hand.   
“Stay here, and don’t come out until I say so. If the barrier fades, replace it immediately and call for Adam on the mirrors,” I said. And then I went outside and went to face whatever was trying to attack me and my home.   



	13. Chapter 13: Turn your face towards the sun, Let the shadows fall behind you

     I hadn’t realized how long I had been inside. The sun was almost entirely down, meaning that the area around my house was covered in a dusky twilight. There, just outside of my barrier was a human figure laying on the ground. It growled and started to get up. I moved with lightning speed to the edge of the barrier and tried to slam it to the ground. However, the dark magic around the figure was swirling and creating a vortex of magic around it, making it hard to land a single hit. It also made the figure hard to see in the dimming light. I slashed with my blades forward. The magically engulfed being hissed and the magic shied away from my blades. I didn’t realize at the time what that meant, I just knew that my daggers were my best bet at that time. I kept lunging and stabbing, trying to just hit the mass of black magic. It was not elegant in the least bit. I was in react mode. I was focused on trying to dispel this mass, but it just kept moving around me, but I kept pushing it away from the house and the village into the forest. It was like an elaborate game of Ninja, where you tried to avoid being hit by the other player and could only move in reaction to the other player trying to hit them. I would lunge, it would doge, and lash out at me. It cut my face and my arms, along with my clothes. The cuts weren’t deep, they were very superficial, but I wasn’t dealing nearly as much damage as I was receiving. It was frustrating me, building up my anger at this entity that thought to attack my home until, finally, after about five minutes of the evasive maneuvering, I actually cut some of the magic with one of my blades. 

    The second it made contact, the mass of magic screeched, and the magic that I had severed turned white and instantly dispersed. I looked down at my blades. They were glowing white and pulsing with magic. I felt a surge of adrenaline, and lept back into the fight with this mass. It tried hard now to just evade me, but I was landing blow after blow, and I could finally see that there was a human trapped in the middle of this mess of magic. My adrenaline came back, surging in my blood. There was a person trapped inside, and I had to save them. I kept chopping off bits of the magic, until eventually, there was not enough for the magic to cover most of the body. I then dropped the blade in my left hand and engulfed my hand in the purest, whitest magic that I could, and reached in to pull the human out of the magic. Once I pulled them out, I called upon the magic again and expanded the barrier around my house to come and stretch to include myself and the person who was in my arms. The rest of the dark magic fled as my barrier came up to meet us. I was exhausted, but I sent a message to Sabrina, telling her to raise her own barrier because I was going to run out of magic soon and that the threat had left.  
“Are you sure?” she responded back.  
“As sure as I can be with so much of my magic drained. I did dispel most of its’ magic, so it’s weak now, whatever it was. It had someone, who I think is going to need some help. Please just put up your barrier to us and we will make our way back.” I took a second to pause as I felt Sabrina’s magical barrier come right up to mine, and let mine drop. I looked down at the person in my arms and almost dropped them in surprise. There, completely knocked out was none other than the capitol jerk himself, Gaston. 

    I groaned, but also I couldn’t just leave him there, not after there was a literal mass of black magic that had surrounded him just moments before. Luckily Braden had come running out of the house. He saw the man in my arms and hesitated. “Look, he’s knocked out right now. I need to look at him. Help me get him to the house!” Braden took another moment, then he nodded and helped me pick up the large man and bring him into our home. We dumped him on the floor of the main room and I ran over to our stores to try and find something that would at least restore his energy. Sabrina was already looking over him, trying to find out what was wrong with him. No matter what this man’s history was, Roselle had taught me that every human being had the right to be alive, at least to answer for their wrong doings if for nothing else. I wasn’t just going to let this man perish without answering to some sort of justice on this Earth. I grabbed some herbs and went back to Gaston. “What did you find Sabrina?” She concentrated on the collapsed man for a moment and then said,  
“He is severely drained. Whatever happened, it took a lot out of him. I’m sensing his spirit is fading fast.” She sighed and put her hands down. “Isabel, what happened? Also one of your daggers is missing.” I looked down to my hands and saw that I had left my left blade outside after I had pulled Gaston out of the magic. I sighed too and sat down, feeling very drained myself. I stared at the jars in my hands, trying to make sense of the chaos that had happened.  
“I don’t know. All I know is that there was a knock on the door, and then a surge of dark magic tried coming towards us through the door. I brought Braden in from the fields and then erected the barrier. When I went outside, there was a swirling mass of magic. It was black and it was aggressive. Despite the fact that my blades would destroy it, it still wanted to attack me until there was almost nothing left. That’s when I pulled Gaston out of the middle of it. Then it left when I pulled Gaston out and here we are.” 

    There was a pause, with Sabrina standing over Gaston, Braden still in the doorway and me on the floor with my head between my legs. I was right about Gaston, there was something magical haunting him, but what? It was pure magic, meaning that it wasn’t a specter or a ghost, they only were outlined in magic. They were not super powerful, and they didn’t drain energy. They simply took over the body and then left. What could drain someone as strong as Gaston? And could it be the same thing that possessed him that night long ago when he attacked the British soldiers? I sighed and pulled myself up to my knees and crawled over to where he was lying on the ground. I started to crush up the herbs and rub them on his temple, to try and stimulate some sort of energy from him so he wouldn’t lose all if it and drift off. “You two should go to bed, I’ll watch over him tonight,” I said.   
“No! You are drained too! Look at your left hand, the glamour is fading. If he wakes up you won’t be able to handle him!” Sabrina said.  
“Why not? I have strength left.”  
“Not really, you are going to deliver within a couple of days, you cannot stress. It will not be good for the birth.”  
“Well you might get hurt.”  
“It’s a hazard of the job of treating nutcases,” I said. “Please Sabrina, I still need your barrier up for a little bit. I don’t know if it’s going to come back and I can’t have you drained of your power just in case it comes back. This I think I can treat with our herbs, so we won’t need magic to bring him back.”  
“Don’t try lying to me Isabel, I know he is going to need magical help.”  
“Alright, yes but it can wait until tomorrow. Braden, take your wife upstairs and make sure she gets to bed after making the barrier a spell that will last through the night.”  
“No Braden stay where you are! I’m not going anywhere! But I will make sure the barrier stays up for the night, so I can focus on helping Gaston.” Sabrina said. She turned around and started focusing. Braden just looked back and forth between us, like were were the most intense tennis match in the entire world. Sabrina finished up with her barrier spell and turned back to me to continue our argument.  
“We are done with this conversation,” I said before she could say anything and I waved my hand and spent the last of my magic making Sabrina fall asleep. 

    Braden caught her before she hit the floor. I looked down at my left hand and saw that I still had a bit of magic left. “Please make sure she doesn’t come down here while he is still here.”  
“You know you aren’t going to hear the end of this right?”  
“I know, but if Gaston wakes up, he will probably hurt the first living thing he sees, or will try to. And without another person inside of me, I have far better reflexes than Sabrina. She needs to focus on trying to have this child and making sure they make it safely in this world. Family is the most important thing,” I said. Braden paused at the stairs with his wife in his arms.  
“She knows that, and I think that’s why she wanted to stop you. Family is the most important thing, and Isabel, you are a part of our family,” he said. “Please be careful.” He then continued up to their room upstairs. I watched him take Sabrina up the stairs and then turned down to my new charge. Gaston’s breathing had become less ragged, and I could see that his energy was slowly coming back. That was a good sign, that meant that whatever that magic did to him wasn’t permanent. However, he was slick with sweat, like a fever had hold of him. I didn’t have the energy to get up and grab any of my tools, so I chewed up some more of the herbs to create a paste. While doing that, I opened up his shirt to expose his chest, and then I spat out the herbs onto his chest and rubbed it around. It was definitely not the most hygenic thing I’ve ever done, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I then took a deep breath and concentrated. The magic around me was very agitated, it was not good for healing. I focused and turned it white and then added a silver twinge, before plunging all of the remaining magic around me in the house into Gaston’s chest. His body heaved in response, but then it settled back down onto the floor, his breathing much easier, and he was resting more peacefully. I dug into one of my pockets and found a rag and wrapped up my left hand, as that action had taken the last of my magic. I then grabbed my dagger from the ground and held it in my hand and leaned against the wall behind me. I felt terrible, I knew that my face was probably a bloody mess, but I was far too drained to deal with it at the time. I watched the rhythmic motion of Gaston’s chest before I eventually fell asleep as well, sitting against the wall, a dagger in one hand, cuts and bruises adorning my face and clothing almost in tatters, facing a man who would probably not believe any of what actually happened and try to harm me when he woke up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry all of my updates have been crazy. I'm out of school for the summer, but I'm going on a trip next week, so expect the next month to kind of be touchy.


	14. Chapter 14: Don’t Listen to a Word I Say, The Screams All Sound The Same

    I did not sleep well that night. I kept waking up throughout the night, and it wasn’t like I would just open my eyes, look around and then fall asleep. No, it was I would jerk awake with my dagger ready to cut something, breathing like I had just run a marathon. It then took me a long time every time I woke up to get back to sleep. I decided that when I saw the sun outside, then I would just get up and go about trying to figure out what was wrong with Gaston. Unfortunately, that was the time my body decided it was going to get the best sleep that night, so when I jerked awake Gaston was already sitting up and glaring at me. I groaned and held my side, which was in more pain than it had been the night before. I slowly got up and went over to the cupboards to try and find something non-complicated to make for breakfast. It was still early, and based on what I said to Braden and Sabrina last night, they weren’t going to get up anytime soon. Gaston was still glaring at me, and following me with his eyes full of confusion, but his aura was lacking it’s usual red, angry magic surrounding him. We had some bread left over from the other day, it was stale but still edible. I grabbed a couple of pieces and handed one to Gaston. “Eat,” I said. “You need something to help you heal.” He took the bread and looked down at his exposed chest and then back at me. I grabbed two cups and poured some healing tea in both of them. I downed one and looked back at Gaston.   
“What happened last night?” he growled. He tried to get up and then he collapsed back down.   
“What do you remember?” I handed him the other cup.  
“I don’t have to answer to you.” But he still took the tea, which I was surprised at. He started to eat the bread and was wincing with pain. 

    “No but it would help me help you. Gaston, something happened last night that we cannot ignore.” He tried to say something but then looked down into his cup.   
“Did I…” he gestured to his exposed chest and to my torn clothes. Then he took a big gulp of the tea. He grimaced, as it was a healing tea and not an enjoyable tea.   
“Oh gosh no. Gross and what about my appearance made you think that? Do most of the women you sleep with look like me when you are done with them? If so, I’m going to cut off your dick. And your tongue. And your eyes.” I glared at him but he just rolled his eyes.   
“I meant did I kill anyone, not did we sleep together,” he said.   
“You are more likely to go into a blind rage and kill someone instead of rapping them, wow that tells me a lot about your personality Gaston,” I said. “But I don’t think you did. I stopped you before anything terrible happened, I hope. I should send Sabrina out to see if anyone needs help actually,” I muttered. “So what do you remember?” He looked down at his drink again and refused to answer. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I saw last night. First there was a knock on my door and then I felt a surge of dark magic coming towards me.”  
“Magic? Magic doesn’t-”  
“Yes it does,” I continued. “So I flung the magic as far as I could and then went out to face it. There was a swirling mass of black magic that I slowly carved down and then at the center of it was you. I pulled you out and the magic left. Then I dragged your ass back here and I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. So are you gonna tell me how you found yourself in the middle of a swirling vortex of dark magic? Or are we just going to wait until it happens again and you potentially kill someone because you refused to get help like a reasonable person?”

    There was a pregnant pause. I was glaring at Gaston and he was staring deeply into his mug. It was at that moment that Braden came downstairs, and Gaston looked up at him. He gulped, nodded, grabbed a piece of bread and then went out to the fields. I just kept glaring at Gaston. His grip on the mug tightened and he stood up, wincing sharply as he did so.   
“Thank you very much for whatever you did Isabel, but I have to leave.”  
“You owe me an explanation Gaston!”   
“I don’t owe you anything!”  
“You almost killed me so yes you do!”  
“But I didn’t, so I don’t owe you anything. Good day.” He put the mug down and he stormed out of the door and the house shuddered when he closed the door. I groaned and went after him. I needed some sort of assurance he wasn’t going to summon whatever had a hold of him last night, not this close to the curse ending either way. There was simply too much magic around currently for something like this happen. If the two types of magic collided, then there would be disastrous results, and I wasn’t sure I could contain the fallout of just Adam’s curse, not to mention whatever Gaston had lurking around him. He was making a hasty retreat back towards his village. I went to the edge of my yard and saw that he was actually close to where my other dagger had been dropped the night previous. I needed Gaston to understand the gravity of the situation, so I did something Roselle would have definitely not approved of. Screw being a calming presence. I didn’t have time to wait for him to be possessed again.   
“Gaston!” I called out. He turned to look at me and when he did that, I summoned the blade to my hand. It whipped through the air and grazed Gaston’s cheek, nothing that would draw blood, but enough for him to notice the blade. He didn’t flinch, but he cooly watched as I grabbed the dagger from the air and admired it so that he could see the entirety of the blade. “Next time, I might not take time to save the individual that that dark magic possesses. Next time, I won’t have the patience to deal with something like that carefully. Unless,” I stressed as I flipped the dagger in my hand, “something were to be told to me that could make this whole situation go away, or at least clarify the situation. Then nobody would be hurt, and we could all go on with our lives.” 

    Gaston stared me down with his dark eyes. The magic around him was starting to return to its usual red color, which meant his energy was almost entirely back.   
“Let’s hope nothing like this happens again then,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a nice quiet, it was a threatening quiet. I normally wouldn’t have heard it, but there was something dangerous about him that made the world slow and come to a still. I returned his cold stare and set my jaw. <  
“Let’s hope,” I said, just as quietly, matching his energy. His eyes narrowed and then he tipped his chin up and turned around to continue onto his village. I watched his retreating back until I could no longer make out his form. I heard the door open up behind me and I turned to see Sabrina in the doorway.   
“You are just going to let him go?” she asked. I sighed and walked up to the house. It was still a mess from last night and I started to clean it up.   
“Yes. As far as we know, the last time something like this probably happened was during that battle. The time between outbursts apparently is several years, and with Adam’s curse being broken one way or the other soon, I don’t think I’m going to have the energy to deal with that and whatever is going on with Gaston. So yeah, I’m just going to let him go until a later date.”  
“But he could hurt someone!”  
“He already has, even without the magic. It’s a miracle Maurice is still alive. We really don’t have the resources right now to go after him. We have a bit too much on our plate right now.” Sabrina still looked very nervous. “I understand. Last night was very frightening, but we have to prioritize. It’s really not an immediate concern, I don’t think.” I took Sabrina’s hands in mine and looked into her eyes. “But I promise, I will look into this when we have time later.”   
“You promise? Because I don’t want my child to come into a world in which there is already danger.” Her voice trembled, and she leaned into my. I wrapped my arms around her.   
“Sabrina, there is always danger. If I haven’t taught you that, then I have failed you. Sabrina, I know that the path that I have given you is not an easy one. You will know more about this world than the average person, and that includes knowing about more dangers that plague our world. However, cowering in fear and stressing about every single thing that pops up won’t help. Yes Gaston is dangerous, but we have another dangerous situation that takes priority right now. This world is dangerous, but it’s how we go about with that information that makes it safer. We have an opportunity to know more, so we have an opportunity to help more. It is scary, but I promise that as long as I live, I will never let anything hurt you, Braden or your children.” 

    Sabrina let out a shaky breath. She sat up and nodded. I gave her hands a squeeze and then we went about the rest of our morning. I took it easy that morning, as I still had some wounds from the night before. I dressed them and wrapped them up. After that, I went out to do the rounds, while I kept Sabrina close to home. We eventually took down the barrier, but I placed wardings around my village as I went around to help the villagers. Whatever had Gaston I hadn’t killed, it had escaped. It was still dangerous. I reached out to the castle, but got the servants.   
“Oh Isabel, it’s wonderful! They go on long walks and talk about all of those convoluted books that the Master loves so much. It’s like it’s fate or destiny! The curse will be broken soon!” Mrs. Potts was telling me through the mirror.   
“Yes it’s wonderful but did you hear what I told you?” I asked.  
“Yes, yes, something about a dangerous magical entity, as if we don’t live with one of those,” Cogsworth answered. He had a point, but this thing was way different than Adam.    
“But this one was different! It was pure magic!” I urged.   
“Look, Isabel, we appreciate the warning, but we have to focus on breaking this curse. If I never get to hold Plumette in my arms again, I might as well be a cold and dead candelabra for the rest of my life anyways,” Lumiere said.   
“Oh my love!” Plumette exclaimed, and she started kissing the golden figure.   
“Fine,” I said while rolling my eyes. “If you want to just focus on that, we will. But this is something we have to discuss when the curse is broken. Please at least just warn Adam and Belle so they aren’t caught off guard. I will make my way out to check up on Belle’s father and warn him as well.” The servants responded with a couple of distracted answers and then they left the mirror. “Great, well I hope I weakened that thing enough where it won’t be trouble for anyone while I go and find Maurice,” I muttered. I gathered up a couple more herbs and then made my way into the forest. 


End file.
